THE PRAIRIE
Two long whistles came ringing up the track.
Carrie Leland rose unsteadily in the big overheated car and struggled
into the furs which had been one of her husband's gifts to her. She had
never worn furs of that kind before, and, indeed, had never seen
anything quite like them in her friends' possession; but, while that had
naturally been a cause of satisfaction, it was, nevertheless, with a
vague repugnance she put them on. They were one of the visible tokens
that in the most sordid sense of the word she belonged to him. The man
had not won her favour. In fact, he had made no great pretence of
seeking it, for which, so far as that went, she was grateful; but he had
evidently carried out his part of the bargain, and now she was part of
his property, acquired by purchase. The recognition of it carried with
it an almost intolerable sting, though hitherto--and it was just a
fortnight since her wedding--she had not felt it quite so keenly. He had
not been exacting, and it had been comparatively easy to keep him at due
distance on board the big mail-boat and in the crowded train, but she
realised it would be different, now they were almost home.
In the meanwhile the great train was slowing down, and, when the
clanging of the locomotive bell came back to her, she went out through
the vestibule and leant on the platform-rails. Two huge wooden
buildings, grain elevators, she supposed, with lines of sledges beneath
them, flitted by. It was with a shiver she glanced at the little wooden
town. It rose abruptly from the prairie, without sign of tree or garden
to relieve its ugliness, an unsightly jumble of wooden houses in the
midst of a vast white plain, which stretched gleaming to the far
horizon, with not even a willow bluff to relieve its desolation. She set
her lips tight as the cars ran slowly into the station. It consisted
apparently of a stock-yard, a towering water-tank, and a weatherbeaten
shed half-buried in snow, and was, as usual when the trains came in,
crowded with men, who looked uncouth and shapeless in dilapidated
skin-coats, and had hard faces, almost blackened by exposure to the
frost. It was all strange and unfamiliar. She had not a friend in that
grim, desolate land, and she felt the physical discomfort almost a
relief by way of distraction from her overpowering sense of loneliness
when the bitter cold struck through her with the keenness of steel.
Then the cars stopped, and her husband, who swung her down into the
dusty snow beside the track, was forthwith surrounded by the crowd. Men
with the snow-dust sprinkled like flour upon their shaggy furs clustered
about him, and their harsh, drawling voices grated on her ears. They
made it evident that he was one of them, for they greeted him with rude
friendliness as "Charley". That was another shock to her prejudices.
Leland, however, waved them aside, and they fell back a pace or two,
gazing at her with unemotional inquiry in their eyes, until he laid his
hand upon her arm.
"I guess you're going to be astonished," he said. "My wife, boys!"
Then the big fur caps came off, while the men with the hard brown faces
clustered thicker about the pair, and awkwardly held out mittened hands.
They were most of them speaking, and, though it was difficult to catch
all they said, she heard from those at the back odd snatches which did
not please her.
"Why didn't you let us know, and we'd have turned out the band? . . .
It's a great country you have come to, ma'am. . . . She's a daisy. . . .
Where'd he get her from? . . . You've married the whitest man on the
prairie, Mrs. Leland. . . . Some tone about that one."
A little red spot burned in Carrie Leland's cheeks. She hovered between
anger and humiliation. Social distinctions counted for much in the land
of her birth, and it seemed to her that the man she had married might
have spared her this vulgarity. It might have been different had she
loved him, for she would then, perhaps, have found pleasure in his
evident popularity; but, as it was, she felt merely the indignity of
being exposed to the gaze and comments of these ox-drivers or ploughmen,
as she took them to be. That she was apparently expected to shake hands
with them struck her as ridiculous. The ovation, however, died away, and
there was for a moment an uncomfortable silence, during which the crowd
gazed at the cold, beautiful woman who regarded them with unsympathetic
eyes, until her husband touched her arm again.
"Won't you say just a word to them? They mean to be kind," he said.
Carrie made no response. She felt she could not have done so had she
wished, and Leland turned to the men again. "Mrs. Leland doesn't feel
quite equal to thanking you, boys," he said. "She has just come off a
long journey and is feeling a little strange."
The men murmured good-humouredly. One of them pushed his way through the
crowd and shook hands with Leland.
"We sent your wheat on to Winnipeg, as you cabled, and your people have
brought us another forty sledge-loads in," he said. "We're rather
tightly fixed for room, and want to know if you're going to send much
more along. No doubt you know wheat is two cents down."
"I do," said Leland drily. "Still, in the meanwhile I have got to sell."
The man appeared a little astonished, but he made a sign of
comprehension. "Well," he said, "if you could have held back a month or
two, it might have been better. They've been rushing a good deal on to
the markets lately, but I guess you'll want to straighten up after your
trip to the old country. Your sleigh's ready, as you wired."
Leland, who, as she noticed, seemed desirous of changing the subject,
turned to his wife.
"Would you like some tea, or anything of that kind?" he said. "If not,
we had better start at once. It's forty miles to Prospect, and there's
not much of the afternoon left. Still, of course, if you prefer it, they
might fix you up a fairly decent room at the hotel to-night."
Carrie glanced at the little desolate town. It appeared uninviting
enough, but when she spoke the words seemed to stick in her throat.
"No," she said; "I would sooner go--home."
Leland said something to the man beside him, and then led Carrie into a
very dirty wooden room with a big stove in the midst of it, after which
he left her to watch, with a sinking heart, the departing train clatter
out into the darkness.
He came back transformed--with a battered fur cap hiding most of his
face, in a very big and somewhat tattered fur coat. With a fresh shock
of dismay, she noticed that he now looked very much as the others did.
In another minute he had lifted her into the sleigh and wrapped the big
robes about her. Then he shook the reins and they were whirled away down
the long smear of trail that led straight off to the horizon.
It was beaten hard, the team were fresh and fast, and for a while the
girl felt the exhilaration of the swift rush through nipping air. The
desolate town faded behind her; a grey blur that lifted itself out of
the horizon, and was a big birch bluff, came flitting back to her; there
was deep stillness, only intensified by the screech of runners and the
soft drumming of hoofs. A vast sweep of fleckless azure overhung the
glistening plain below. It was not all white, however, for there were
shades of grey and dusky purple in the hollows, and the trail was a wavy
riband that rose and fell in varying blue. It was beautiful in its own
way, and the stinging air stirred her blood like wine. That was for an
hour or so; but when the sun dipped, a red, copper ball, amidst a frosty
haze, and the blues and greys crept wide across the whiteness of the
plain, the cold laid hold of her. Leland, who had scarcely spoken,
looked down.
"Are you warm?" he said.
The girl was scarcely willing to admit that she was not; but the frost
of the Northwest strikes keen and deep, and, after all, it was his
business to attend to her physical comfort.
"No," she said; "I am very cold."
Leland nodded, though there was light enough to show the curious look in
his eyes. "Well," he said, "that ought to be excuse enough for me, and
it's going to be a good deal colder presently."
He slipped his free arm round her, and drew her to him masterfully. Then
he shook the furs higher about her neck with the hand that held the
reins, and Carrie, who felt that protest would be useless and
undignified, said nothing when she found her shoulder drawn against his
breast, though the old fur coat had a faint but unmistakable odour of
tobacco and the stable about it.
Leland looked down on her with a little laugh. "After all, that is where
you ought to be," he said. "Perhaps, if I am very good to you, you will
come there of your own will, by-and-bye."
Carrie said nothing, and, though she felt her cheeks burn, it was not
altogether with anger against him. The man had been tactfully
considerate, and had deferred to her as she felt that Aylmer would not
have done. Indeed, she realised that she owed him a good deal, if only
because of the delicacy he had displayed, and which she had scarcely
expected from one so much beneath her in station. It was not even so
repugnant as she had fancied to lie there warmed by the heat of his
body, with his arm about her, and she felt, at least, a comforting
confidence in his ability to shelter and protect her. What Leland felt
he did not tell her until some time afterwards. He was accustomed to
restraint, and, too, the driving occupied most of his attention, for
darkness was creeping across the waste, and the snow was deep outside
the beaten trail.
Then the cold increased until it grew numbing, and when the pain ceased,
all feeling died out of the girl's hands and feet. She gradually grew
drowsy, and, looking up now and then with heavy eyes, saw only the dim
shapes of the horses projected against the bitter blueness of the night.
Still, at times, they plunged into belts of shadow, where there was a
crackling under the runners and a flitting by of ghostly trees that
vanished when they once more swept out into the awful cold of the open.
Now and then Leland called to the horses, but his voice was lost again
next moment in the silence it had scarcely broken. A curious sense of
the unreality of it all came upon the girl. She almost felt that, if she
could cry out, he and the team would vanish, and all would be with her
as it had been in England before she met him. Then the drumming of hoofs
grew very faint, and with a half-conscious desire for warmth she crept
still closer to the silent man, who looked down on her very
compassionately, and then, setting his lips, gave his attention again to
the team. She remembered nothing further until she roused herself at a
pressure on her arm.
"Prospect is close in front of us," said her companion.
She raised herself a trifle, and, looking round with a shiver, saw a
half-moon sailing low above a dusky mass of trees. What seemed to be a
wooden house stood in the midst of them, and its windows flung out
streaks of ruddy light upon the snow. Behind it, she could dimly see a
range of strange, shapeless buildings. They did not in the least look
like English stables, barns, or granaries. Then there was a sound of
voices, and a door swung open, letting out a broader track of
brightness, in the midst of which the sleigh pulled up. Shadowy figures
appeared here and there, and Leland, who unstrapped the robes, rolled
them about her. Then, before she quite realised his purpose, he had
lifted her and them together, and was walking stiffly towards the house.
In another minute or two he set her down in a little log-walled room
which had a tiled stove in the middle of it, and a hard-featured elderly
woman came towards her with a kindly smile in her eyes.
"Mrs. Nesbit, Carrie," said the man. "She has been looking after the
house for me lately. My wife's 'most frozen, and you'll do what you can
to make her comfortable. . . . I suppose those are the fixings from
Montreal?"
Mrs. Nesbit said they were, but that they had arrived with one of the
sledges too late to be opened that day. Leland pointed to several
canvas-covered rolls and bulky cases as he turned to the girl.
"They're curtains and rugs and carpets, and things of that kind," he
said. "We don't worry much about them on the prairie, but this room and
the next one are your own, unless there are any you like better. We'll
get the cases opened to-morrow."
He went out, and it was some little time later when Carrie found him
awaiting her in a great bare room. There were antelope heads, guns,
axes, rifles, and here and there a splendid cluster of wheat ears, upon
the walls, but there was nothing on the floor, and the furniture
appeared to consist of a table, a carpenter's bench, a set of
bookshelves, and a few lounge chairs. Still, it was well warmed by the
big crackling stove, and she sank with a little sigh of physical content
into one of the chairs he drew out. Leland, who now wore a jacket of
soft white deer-skin, stooped beside her and took one of her still
chilly hands in his. It was also the one on a finger of which there
gleamed the ring, and he glanced at it with a queer, half-wistful little
smile.
"I hope you will be happy here. What I can do to make it home to you
will be done," he said.
He stopped a moment, and, seeing she made no response, went on:
"All the way out I have thought of you sitting here. Since my mother, no
woman but Mrs. Nesbit has crossed my threshold. It has been all work and
loneliness with me. Won't you try to make it different now?"
He laid his other hand gently on her shoulder, and the girl who bore his
name felt her cheeks burn as she turned her eyes away. A caress would
have been in one sense a very little thing, but she could not bring
herself to invite it then, and she was further warned by what she saw in
her companion's eyes.
Leland for a moment closed one of his hard hands. Presently he smiled
again and, drawing another of the chairs up, sat down beside her.
"Well," he said, "you will get used to me by-and-bye, and I only want to
please you in the meanwhile. And now about Mrs. Nesbit. We'll send her
away if it would suit you, and you can get somebody from Winnipeg,
though I don't know that it wouldn't be better to let Jake do the
cooking and cleaning as before. It's quite difficult to get maids in
this country, and, when you've had them 'bout a week, they marry
somebody. Anyway, that's your business. The one thing to be done is what
you like, but if you could see your way to keep Mrs. Nesbit, it would
please me."
It was almost the only thing he had asked of her, and she was willing to
humour him in this. "Of course," she said. "In fact, I rather like her.
Who is she?"
"A widow, the mother of one of the boys who drives a team for me. Wages
come down when there's little doing with the snow upon the ground, and
he's away railroading. I told him I'd see the old lady was looked after
until he came back again."
"But how could you have done that, if I had sent her away?"
"I'd have boarded her out with Custer at The Range, whose wife wants
help and can't hire it. Mrs. Nesbit would never have known where the
money came from."
Carrie Leland smiled. It was only a few months since she had first set
eyes upon the man, but she felt that, if she had been his housekeeper, a
device of that kind would not have availed with her. There was no doubt
that he had his strong points.
Then another young man came in, and was presented to her as Tom Gallwey.
He called her husband "Charley", and spoke with a clean English
intonation.
"I'm going round to give the boys their instructions," he said. "We have
cleaned out the sod granaries as you cabled. Are we to break into the
straw-pile to-morrow?"
"Yes," said Leland. "You'll go on hauling wheat in with every team."
"I suppose you know what has happened to the market? One would fancy it
wasn't a good time to sell."
"Still, you'll haul that wheat in. We'll go into the rest to-morrow.
Will you come back to supper?"
The young man glanced at Carrie. "If Mrs. Leland will excuse me, I think
not," he said, and departed, as he evidently considered, tactfully.
"An Englishman?" said the girl, with a trace of colour in her face.
"I've never asked him, but he talks like one. I struck him shovelling on
a railroad, and looking very sick, two or three years ago. Now he gets
decent pay for looking after things for me."
Just then another man in weirdly patched blue-jean, who limped in his
walk and carried the tray with his left hand, brought in supper. He
gazed at Carrie so hard that he spilled some of the contents of the
dishes, and, when he went out, she glanced at her husband with a smile.
"I suppose that is another pensioner?" she said.
"No," said Leland. "He earns his pay, and all I did was to make it a
little easier for him. He got himself mixed up with a threshing mill at
another place a while ago."
"And he naturally came to you?"
Leland's eyes sparkled shrewdly. "Well," he said, "I guess I get my full
value out of him. Won't you come to supper?"
Carrie took her place at the head of the table, and found the pork,
fried potatoes, apples, flapjacks, and hot corn-cakes much more
palatable than she had expected. She also looked very dainty sitting
there in the great bare room, and was not displeased when Leland told
her so. In fact, the more she saw of him, the more favourably he
impressed her, and, though she remembered always that she was a Denham
of Barrock-holme, and he a Western farmer of low degree, she did what
she could to be gracious to him. It was not until the meal was over that
a trace of the bitterness she had felt towards him came back to her.
"I suppose you posted the letter I gave you at Winnipeg?" she said.
Leland showed some little embarrassment. "I did. I was going to talk to
you about it in a day or two, because it wouldn't be quite convenient to
have Mrs. Heaton out from Chicago just now."
Carrie glanced at him sharply. "You told me I could fill the house with
my friends, if I wished."
"I believe I did," said Leland. "Anyway, I meant it. Still, we're not
going to worry about that to-night."
Carrie saw that he was resolute, and discreetly changed the subject. She
had not yet quite shaken off the effects of the cold, and in another
hour rose drowsily from beside the stove.
Leland opened the door, and stood with his hand on it. "Mrs. Nesbit will
see you have everything you want," he said. "Don't come down too
early--and good-night."
He took the hand she held out, and did not let it go at once. The girl
felt her heart beat a wee bit faster than usual, as it had done once or
twice before that day. Again she felt that it was only fitting she
should offer her cheek to him, but it was more than she could do.
Then he dropped her hand, and made her a little inclination as he once
more said, "Good-night."