THE FARQUHAR HOMESTEAD
When she reached the wagon Alison found it covered by a heavy waterproof
sheet which was stretched across a pole. Loose hay had been strewn
between a row of wooden cases and one side of the vehicle and the space
beneath the sheeted roof was filled with a faint aromatic odor, which
she afterward learned was the smell of the wild peppermint that grows in
the prairie grass. When she had spread one blanket on the hay the couch
felt seductively soft, and she sank into it contentedly. Tired as she
was, however, she did not go to sleep immediately, for it was the first
night she had ever spent in the open, and for a time the strangeness of
her surroundings reacted on her.
The front of the tent was open, and resting on one elbow she could see
the sinking fires still burning red among the leafless trees, and the
pale wisps of smoke that drifted among their spectral stems. At the foot
of the slope there was a wan gleam of water and beyond that in turn the
prairie rolled away, vast and dim and shadowy, with a silver half-moon
hanging low above its eastern rim. To one who had lived in the cities,
as she had done, the silence was at first so deep as to be almost
overwhelming, but by degrees she became conscious that it was broken by
tiny sounds. There was a very faint, elfin tinkle of running water, a
whispering of grasses that bent to the little cold breeze which had just
sprung up, and the softest, caressing rustle of the lace-like birch
twigs. Then, as the moon rose higher the vast sweep of wilderness and
sky gathered depth of color and became a wonderful nocturne in blue and
silver.
In the meanwhile a pleasant warmth was creeping through her wearied body
and she began to wonder with a sense of compunction how many blankets
Thorne possessed, and where he was. It was at least certain that he was
nowhere near the fire, for she had carefully satisfied herself on that
point. Then a wild, drawn-out howl drifted up to her across the faintly
gleaming prairie and she started and held her breath, until she
remembered that Thorne had said there was no reason why she should be
alarmed if she heard a coyote. He was, she felt, a man one could
believe. The beast did not howl again, but she continued to think of her
companion as her eyes grew heavy. There was no doubt that he had a
pleasant voice and a handsome face. Then her eyes closed altogether and
her yielding elbow slipped down among the hay.
The sun was where the moon had been when she opened her eyes again.
Climbing down from the wagon she saw no sign of Thorne. A bucket filled
with very cold water, however, stood beneath a tree, where she did not
remember having noticed it on the previous evening, and a towel hung
close by. A few minutes later she took down the towel and glanced at it
dubiously. It was by no means overclean and she wondered with misgivings
what the man did with it. It seemed within the bounds of possibility
that he dried the plates on it and, what was worse, that he might do so
again. In the meanwhile, however, the hair on her forehead was dripping
and the water was trickling down her neck, so she shut her eyes tight
and applied the towel, after which she concealed it carefully in the
wagon.
A quarter of an hour later Thorne appeared and she was relieved upon one
point at least. Whether he had slept with blankets or without them, he
did not look cold, and his appearance indeed suggested that he had been
in the neighboring creek. She was astonished to notice that he had
brushed himself carefully and had sewed up the rent in the knee of his
overalls. Clothes-brushes, she correctly supposed, were scarce on the
Canadian prairie, but it seemed probable that he would require a brush
of some kind to clean his horses.
"If you wouldn't mind laying out breakfast I'll make a fire and catch
the team," he said. "It's a glorious morning; but once the winter's over
we have a good many of them here."
"Yes," assented Alison; "everything is so delightfully fresh."
His eyes rested on her for a moment and she was unpleasantly conscious
that her dress was badly creased and crumpled as well as shabby; but he
did not seem to notice this.
"That," he said, "is what struck me a minute or two ago."
He busied himself about the fire, and when he strode away through the
bluff in search of the horses she heard him singing softly to himself.
She recognized the aria, and wondered a little, for it was not one that
could be considered as popular music.
They had breakfast when he came back and both laughed when she prepared
the flapjacks under his direction. She felt no restraint in this
stranger's company. Indeed, she was conscious of a pleasant sense of
camaraderie, which seemed the best name for it, though she had hired
him to drive her to Mrs. Hunter's and was very uncertain as to whether
she could pay him.
He harnessed the team when the meal was over and explained that although
Volador was still lame they might contrive to reach Graham's Bluff at
sundown by proceeding by easy stages, and Alison tactfully led him on to
talk about himself as they drove away. Though there were one or two
points on which he was reserved, he displayed very little diffidence,
which, however, is a quality not often met with among the inhabitants of
western Canada.
"Well," he said with an air of whimsical reflection in answer to one
question, "I suppose my chief complaint is an excess of individuality.
They beat it out of you with clubs in England, unless you're
rich--really rich--when you can, of course, do anything. On the other
hand, the man who is merely stodgily prosperous is hampered by more
rules than anybody else. This is, I must explain, another notion I've
arrived at by observation and not from experience."
"One supposes that a certain amount of uniformity and subordination is
necessary to progress," commented Alison.
"Oh, yes," agreed Thorne; "that's the trouble. Progress marches with
massed battalions and makes so much dust that it's not always able to
see where it's going. Perhaps it's that or the bewildering change of
leaders that renders so much countermarching unavoidable."
"Then you prefer to act with the vedettes and skirmishers?"
"No," said Thorne; "not that exactly. Some of us are more like the
camp-followers. We collect our toll on the booty and when that's too
difficult we live on the country. After all, mine's an ancient if not a
very respectable calling. There were always pilgrims, minstrels and
pedlers."
"It can't be a luxurious life."
Thorne looked amused.
"Are you quite sure you didn't mean a useful one?"
Alison felt uncomfortable, because this idea had been in her mind.
"I'll answer the question, anyway," continued Thorne. "These people and
those in the wheat-growing lands across the frontier work twelve and
fourteen hours every day. It's always the same unceasing toil with
them--they have no diversions. We go round and carry the news from place
to place, tell them the latest stories, and now and then sing to them.
We don't tax them too much either--a supper when they're poor--a dollar
for a mirror or a bottle of elixir, which it must be confessed most of
them have no possible use for."
"Did you never do anything else?" Alison inquired; "that is, in Canada?"
"Oh, yes," replied her companion. "I was clerk in an implement store
which I walked out of at its proprietor's request after an attack of
injudicious candor. You see, a rather big farmer came in one day and
spent most of the morning examining our seeders and pointing out their
defects. Then he inquired why we had the assurance to demand so much for
our implement when he could buy a very much better one several dollars
cheaper. I asked him if he was sure of that, and when he said he was I
suggested that it would be considerably wiser to go right away and buy
it instead of wasting his time and mine. The proprietor desired to know
how we expected him to make a living if we talked to customers like
that, and I pointed out that we couldn't do so anyway by answering
insane questions."
Alison laughed delightedly. She felt that this was not mere rodomontade,
but that the man was perfectly capable of doing as he had said.
"Had you any more experiences of the same kind?" she asked.
"I was shortly afterward projected out of a wheat broker's office."
"Projected?"
Thorne grinned.
"I believe that describes it. You see, they were three to one; but I
took part of the office fittings along with me. I must own that I lost
my temper and insulted them."
"But why did you do so?"
"Well," answered Thorne reflectively, "I like the Colonial, and
especially the Westerner, though he's rather fond of insisting on his
superiority over the rest of mankind. One gets used to this, but it now
and then grows galling when he compares himself with the folks who come
out from the old country. On the day in question the trouble arose from
a repetition of the usual formula that if it wasn't for the ocean they'd
have the whole scum of Europe coming over. I, however, shook hands with
the man who said it not long afterward, and he told me that after I had
gone, which was how he expressed it, they sat down and laughed until
they ached, thinking what the wheat broker, who was out on business,
would say when he saw his office."
Alison was genuinely amused and she ventured another question.
"Did you leave your situations in England in the same fashion?"
The man's face darkened for a moment.
"As it happened, I hadn't any."
Alison turned the conversation into what promised to be a safer channel,
and they drove along very slowly all morning. When they set out again
after a lengthy stop at noon Thorne asked her if she would mind walking
for a while, as Volador was becoming very lame. He added that he would
make for an outlying homestead, where they would find entertainment,
instead of Graham's Bluff, and that they should reach Mrs. Hunter's on
the following day.
It was six o'clock in the evening when they arrived at a frame house
which stood, roofed with cedar shingles, in the shelter of a big birch
bluff. There was a very rude sod-built stable, a small log barn, and a
great pile of straw, which appeared to be hollow inside and used as a
store of some kind. A middle-aged man with a good-humored look met them
at the door, and his wife greeted Alison in a kindly fashion when Thorne
explained the cause of their visit. Indeed, Alison was pleased with the
woman's face and manner, though, like many of the small wheat-growers'
wives, she looked a little worn and faded. Though the men toil
strenuously on the newly broken prairie, the heavier burden not
infrequently falls to the woman's share.
Farquhar, their host, went out to work after supper but came back a
little before dusk, and when they sat out on the stoop together, Thorne
got his banjo and sang twice at Mrs. Farquhar's request; once some
amusing jingle he had heard in Winnipeg, and afterward "Mandalay."
The song was not new to Alison, but she fancied that she had never heard
it rendered as Maverick Thorne sang it then. It was not his voice,
though that was a fine one, but the knowledge that had given him power
of expression, which held her tense and still. This man knew and had
indulged in and probably suffered for the longing for something that was
strange and different from all that his experience had touched before.
He was one of the free-lances who could not sit snugly at home; and in
her heart Alison sympathized with him.
She had never seen the glowing, sensuous East and South, but the new
West lay open before her in all its clean, pristine virility. A vast
sweep of sky that was duskily purple eastward stretched overhead, a
wonderful crystalline bluish green, until it changed far off on the
grassland's rim to a streak of smoky red. Under it the prairie rolled
back like a great silent sea. There was something that set the blood
stirring in the dew-chilled air, and the faint smell of the wood smoke
and the calling of the wild fowl on a distant sloo intensified the sense
of the new and unfamiliar. One could be free in that wide land, she
felt; and as she thought of the customs, castes, and conventions to
which one must submit at home, she wondered whether they were needed
guides and guards or mere cramping fetters. They seemed to have none of
them in western Canada.
She said "Thank you!" when Thorne laid down his banjo, and felt that the
spoken word had its limits, though she was careful not to look at him
directly just then, and soon afterward she retired. This house was
larger and much better furnished than the one she had last slept in,
though she supposed that it would have looked singularly comfortless and
almost empty in England. There was, for one thing, neither a curtain at
a window nor a carpet on the floor.
When she joined the others at breakfast the next morning her host
informed Thorne that if they could wait until noon he could lend him a
horse to replace the lame Volador. He had, he explained, sent his hired
man off with a team on the previous day for a plow which was being
repaired by a smith who lived at a distance, and he had some work for
the second pair that morning. The men went out together when breakfast
was over, and Mrs. Farquhar sat down opposite Alison after she had
cleared the table.
"Thorne tells me you are going to Mrs. Hunter's, though you don't know
yet whether you will stay with her or not," she said.
It occurred to Alison that this was a tactful way of expressing it,
though she was not sure that the delicacy was altogether Thorne's, for
she had no doubt that her hostess had once been accustomed to a much
smoother life in the Canadian cities.
"No," she replied, "I really can't tell until I get there."
"Then, in case you don't decide to stay, we should be glad to have you
here."
Alison was astonished, but in spite of her usual outward calm there was
a vein of impulsiveness in her, and she leaned forward in her chair.
"I don't suppose you know that I am quite useless at any kind of
housework," she said. "I can't wash things, I can't cook, and I can
scarcely sew."
Mrs. Farquhar smiled.
"When I first came out here from Toronto it was much the same with me,
and there was nobody to teach me. It's fortunate that men are not very
fastidious in this part of Canada. In any case I had, perhaps, better
mention that while I would be glad to pay you at the usual rate and you
would be required to help, you would live with us as one of the family.
I want a companion. With my husband at work from sunup until dark, it's
often lonely here. Besides, the arrangement would give you an
opportunity for learning a little and finding out how you like the
country."
Alison thought hard for a few moments. What she was offered was a
situation as a servant, but she decided that it would be more pleasant
here than she supposed it must generally be in England. She felt
inclined to like this woman, and her husband's manner was reassuring.
There was no doubt that they would treat her well.
"I'm afraid that in a little while you would be sorry you had suggested
it," she said.
"The question is, would you like to try?"
"I'm quite sure of that," declared Alison impulsively. "I don't suppose
you know what it is to be offered a resting-place when you arrive,
feeling very friendless and forlorn, in a new country."
Mrs. Farquhar smiled.
"Then if you don't care to stay with Mrs. Hunter you must come straight
back here. It would, perhaps, be better if you went to her in the first
instance."
"But don't you want any references?"
"I don't think I do. In this case, your face is sufficient, and from
experience we don't attach any great importance to vouchers of the other
kind. Harry sometimes says that when a man is found to be insufferable
in the old country they give him a walletful of letters of introduction,
crediting him with all the virtues, and send him out to us. Besides,
even if you were really quite dreadful, your friends wouldn't go back on
you when I wrote to them."
Alison laughed, and as the hired man appeared at noon with Farquhar's
team she drove away with Thorne soon after dinner. When they had left
the house behind she turned to him.
"You have been talking about me to Mrs. Farquhar," she said.
"Yes," admitted Thorne with a smile, "I must confess that I have. Is
there any reason why you should be angry?"
"I'm not," Alison informed him. "But why did you do it?"
"I'm far from sure that you will like Mrs. Hunter. In fact, I'd be a
little astonished if you did; and if you were a relative of mine I'd try
to make you stay with Mrs. Farquhar."
"I wonder whether that means that Mrs. Hunter doesn't like you?"
Thorne laughed good-humoredly.
"Oh, I'm much too insignificant a person to count either way. Mrs.
Hunter is what you might call _grande dame_."
"Have you any of them in western Canada?"
"Well," answered Thorne, with an air of whimsical reflection, "there are
certainly not many, and in spite of it the country gets along pretty
well. We have, however, quite a few women of excellent education and
manners who don't seem to mind making their children's dresses and
washing their husband's clothes. Anyway, if she's at home, you can form
your own opinion of Florence Hunter in an hour or two."
"Is she often away?"
"Not infrequently. Every now and then she goes off to Winnipeg, Toronto,
or Montreal."
"But what about her husband? Can he leave his farm?"
"Hunter," Thorne replied dryly, "invariably stays at home."
His manner made it clear that he intended to say no more on that
subject, and they talked about other matters while the wagon jolted on
across the sunlit prairie.