HAIL
A thin crescent moon hung low in the western sky. The prairie was
wrapped in silent shadows. Leland stood outside the homestead, with the
bridle of an impatient horse in his hand, and talked with his wife.
There was only one light in the house behind them, and everything was
very still, but Leland knew that two men who could be trusted to keep
good watch were wide awake that night. The barrel of a Marlin rifle hung
behind his shoulders, glinting fitfully when it caught the light as he
moved. Without thinking of what he was doing, he fingered the clip of
the sling.
"The moon will be down in half an hour, and it will be quite dark before
I cross the ravine near Thorwald's place," he said. "Jim Thorwald is
straight, and standing by the law, but none of us are quite sure of all
of his boys. Anyway, we don't want anybody to know who's riding to the
outpost."
Carrie laid her hand upon his arm. "I suppose you must go, this once at
least."
"Of course!" said Leland with a smile. "If I'm wanted, I must go again.
The trouble's spreading."
"Then," said Carrie, "why can't they bring more troopers in? Why did you
ever have anything to do with it, Charley?"
"It seemed necessary. A man has to hold on to what is his."
Carrie's fingers tightened on his arm. "Perhaps it is so; I suppose it
must be; but, after all, I don't think that was your only reason. I
mean, when you started the quarrel. No, you needn't turn away. I want
you to look at me."
"It's dark, my dear, and I'm glad it is. I don't want to talk of those
times, and if it were light enough to see you, I'm afraid it would melt
the resolution out of me."
"Still," Carrie persisted, "you know you first quarrelled with the
rustlers because you were angry with me."
Leland laughed softly. "Well, perhaps that was the reason, though I
would sooner believe it was because I recognised what I owed the State."
"But it is all different--you are not in the least angry with me now?"
The moonlight was very dim, and showed no more than the pale white oval
of her face; but Leland felt the appeal in her voice, and knew that it
was also in her eyes.
"My dear," he said quietly, "how could I be?"
Carrie lifted her hand and laid it on his shoulder. "Charley, I can't
stop you now, but I want you to promise you will not go back again. Do
you know that I sit still, shivering, when darkness comes while you are
away, trying not to think of what you may be doing? I daren't think.
Can't you understand, Charley, that I have only you?"
Feeling how hard it was to leave her, and fearing that further
tenderness from her might weaken his firm purpose, he sought refuge in a
frivolous retort.
"There are still a few of your relatives at Barrock-holme," he said.
"They never write me. Perhaps I couldn't expect them to. I thought you
knew that I had offended them."
"Offended them?"
Carrie laughed a trifle harshly. "Oh," she said, "it is a wife's duty to
take her husband's part; but, after all, that is not the question. I
hadn't meant to mention it. It doesn't matter in the least."
"Well," said Leland, "I almost think it does. Anyway, if it worries you.
What have you been falling out with them over, Carrie?"
"That is not your business. They don't care about me now, but you do."
Leland had only one free hand, but he slipped it round her waist. She
sighed contentedly as she felt his protecting clasp.
"Charley, you will not go back again?" she said once more.
The man drew his arm away. Though she could scarcely see his face, he
appeared to be looking down upon her gravely.
"It is a little hard not to do what you ask me straight away, but I
think you can understand," he said. "Whatever I went into the thing for,
I am in it now. Practically, I'm leader. It is not the Sergeant the boys
look to, but me, and I'm not quite sure they would have kept the thing
up if I hadn't worried them into doing it. Still, they'll go on now, and
they would only think of two reasons if I backed down. Would you like
them to fancy the rustlers had bought me over, or made me afraid of
them?"
"Could any one think that?" and Carrie laughed scornfully, though her
voice grew suddenly soft again. "It wouldn't matter in the least to me
what anybody said."
"Well," said Leland gravely, "I 'most think it would, and I should like
it to. Anyway, if I backed down, it would be because I was afraid. In
fact, I'm afraid now, though I never used to be. It's a little difficult
to tell you this, though you know it, but, when I stirred the boys up, I
could not be sure you would ever be what you are to me. It didn't seem
likely then, but I made no conditions when the rest stood in with me.
Now I think you see I can't go back on them."
Carrie made a little nod of agreement, and, with an effort, repressed a
sigh, for she knew that she had failed. Her husband's code was simple,
and, perhaps, crude, but it was, at least, inflexible. After all, honour
and duty are things well within the comprehension of very simple men.
Indeed, it is often the case that, where principles are concerned, the
simplest men have the clearest vision.
"Ah," she said, with something like a sob, "then you must go. But stand
still a minute, Charley. I want to see if the clip I bought you in the
Winnipeg gun-shop is working properly."
Leland smiled as she pressed a little clasp and then, dropping one hand
smartly, caught the rifle as the sling fell apart. Carrie had changed
suddenly and curiously. The pride that was in her had awakened, and she
was at one with her husband and wholly practical.
"It is ever so much quicker than passing it over your shoulder; and,
after all, you must go," she said.
She stretched up her arms and kissed him. When the man had swung himself
into the saddle, she looked long after him, with eyes that were hazy.
When he became a blur in the distance, she went slowly to the house,
head proudly erect. There Eveline Annersly greeted her.
"My dear," she said, "you need not tell me. You have been trying to hold
your husband back, and you have failed. The thing was out of the
question. You might have known."
Carrie made a little half-wistful gesture, though there was a faint glow
in her eyes. "Yes, I did what I could, and now I shall not rest until he
comes back again. Still, I think I deserve it, and I'm not sure that I
would have him different. I think nothing would change Charley. I used
to wonder more than I do now how he, who was born on the prairie, came
to have all the real essential things which were not in any of us at
Barrock-holme."
Eveline Annersly's eyes sparkled, and her manner was sardonic. "It's not
very explicit, but I think I know what you mean. Haven't you lost your
faith in the old fetish yet? Men are men--good, bad, and
indifferent--the world over, and, though it would be rather nice to
believe it, we haven't, and never had, a monopoly in our own class of
what you call the essentials. Indeed, I'm not quite sure one couldn't go
a little further."
She was standing near the open window, with the light, which was low,
some distance away from her. Turning, she drew Carrie within the heavy
curtains. "The very old and the very new are apt to meet," she said.
"There is an example yonder."
Carrie looked out into the soft moonlight, and saw a mounted figure cut
against the sky on the crest of a low rise. It was indistinct and
shadowy, but, as she gazed, she twice caught the gleam of the pale cold
light on steel, and knew it for the flash of a rifle-barrel.
"Oh," she said, "since I came to this country I have felt it too. That
was how the border spears rode out six hundred years ago. . . . Of
course, you were right a little while ago. I think the things that are
essential must always have been the same--primitive and unchangeable.
Faith and courage have always been needed, as they are needed still.
After all, we cannot get away from death and toil and pain."
The lonely figure vanished into the night, and, as her companion moved
away, Carrie let the curtain fall behind her with a little sigh. "It is
getting late, and I can only wait and try to think there is no danger,
until he comes back to me. No doubt others have done it, back through
all the centuries."
She went out, but Eveline Annersly sat a while thoughtfully by the open
window. What she had expected had at last come to pass, and she had the
satisfaction which does not always attend the efforts of the matrimonial
schemer; for there was no longer any doubt that Carrie Leland loved her
husband. Once more, as Nature will often have it, like had drawn to
unlike, with a fusion of discordant qualities in indissoluble and
harmonious union, that what the one lacked the other might supply. The
pair she had brought together were no longer two but one, which, while
she was quite aware that it did not always happen, was, when it did,
like the springing up of the wheat--a mystery and a miracle.
Eveline Annersly was old enough to know that there are many mysteries,
but that by love alone man may come nearest to their comprehension.
Then she remembered that it was getting late, and, leaving the window
open, for the night was hot and still, sought her room, and in another
half-hour was sound asleep. She had slept several hours, when she was
awakened by a queer sound that seemed to come from outside through the
open door. It was a dull noise, which, accustomed as she had grown to
the beat of hoofs, suggested a company of mounted men riding up out of
the prairie. The sound kept increasing, until she could have fancied
that it was made by a regiment, and then suddenly swelled into the roar
of a brigade of cavalry going by on the gallop. The house seemed to reel
as under a blow, the doors swung to with a crash, and there was a
clatter of things hurled down in the adjoining room. Then she rose and
flung on a dressing-gown, and, crossing the room, stopped when she had
clutched the door handle, almost afraid to open it, bewildered by the
indescribable tumult. At last a gleam of light appeared between the
chinks. Mustering courage to open the door, she saw Carrie standing in
the room, half dressed, with a candle in her hand. That was just for a
moment, for the feeble gleam went out, and she groped her way through
black darkness towards the girl.
"What is it?" she gasped.
"The hail!" said Carrie, hoarsely. "Come with me. We must shut the
window quick."
It cost them both an effort, and Carrie was some little time lighting
the lamp when they had accomplished it. Then Eveline Annersly sank into
the nearest chair, with her arm about the shoulders of the girl who
knelt beside her. Even with the windows shut, the lamplight flickered,
and, when it fell upon her, Carrie's face showed set and white.
"Ah," she said, "the wheat! It will all be cut down by morning, and
Charley ruined."
It was a minute or two before Eveline Annersly quite understood her, for
there was just then a deafening crash of thunder, and, after it, the
stout wooden building appeared to rock at the onslaught of an icy wind
that struck through every crevice with a stinging chill. The hail roared
on walls and shingled roof with a bewildering din. Then the uproar
slackened a little, and, as she glanced towards the melting ice which
had beaten into the room, it seemed to her scarcely possible that
Leland's crop could have escaped disaster. She had never seen hail like
that in England; in fact, it scarcely seemed hail at all, but big lumps
of ice, and the crash of it upon the roof was like the roar upon a beach
of surf-rolled stones.
The sound of it, and the wild wailing of the gale, sapped her courage;
so she understood the strained look in Carrie's eyes. There are times
when men, as well as women, stand appalled by the elemental fury, and,
shaking off all restraint that a complex civilisation may have laid upon
them, become wholly human and primitive again. Carrie was half crouching
at her aunt's feet, gazing up at her with wild, fierce eyes. Eveline
Annersly shuddered a little as she glanced at her.
"Will the house stand?" she gasped.
The girl's laugh rang harshly through the roar of the hail. "I don't
know. What does that matter, anyway? Can't you understand? The wheat
will all be cut down. I have ruined Charley."
Then there was a lull for a minute or two, and Carrie, reaching up a
hand, gripped her companion's arm.
"Did you ever hear how much I cost my husband?" she said.
Terrified as she was, Eveline Annersly started at the question. It was
not expressed delicately, but, after all, there was no doubt that the
girl's marriage had been more or less a matter of bargaining. "Of course
not," she said.
"I don't know, either, but I'm sure it was ever so much," and Carrie's
fingers trembled on her arm, though her eyes were fierce. "In one way, I
am glad it was. I like to feel that he was willing to offer everything
that was his for me. It isn't in the least degrading to belong to
Charley Leland, however I came into his possession. Not in the least.
How could it be? Still, once it seemed horrible even to think of it."
She stopped a minute with a little indrawing of her breath. "Besides, I
am glad in another way, because, if he is really ruined, I am going to
get all I cost him back again. Jimmy and my father would call it a
loan."
Eveline Annersly was distinctly startled, though she understood that all
restraint had been flung aside, and Carrie Leland had responded to the
influence of this storm that had brought her face to face with a crisis
in her husband's affairs, the raw human nature in her had come
uppermost, and she was for the time being merely a woman with primitive
passions raised, ready to fight for her mate. It was, her companion
recognised, a thing that not infrequently happened--a part, indeed, of
Nature's scheme that had a higher warrant; but, for all that, she was
sensible again that there was in the girl's set face something from
which people of fastidious temperament, who had never felt the strain,
might feel inclined to shrink.
"Carrie," she said, "the thing is out of the question. They are your
father and brother. You cannot force them into an open rupture. You must
put it out of your mind."
The girl gripped her arm cruelly. "One must choose sometimes, and I am
my husband's flesh and blood. Once that seemed a curious fancy,
repugnant too, but it is real now--one of the great real things to
Charley and me."
Eveline Annersly said nothing, and the wind beat upon the house as the
girl went on. "Aunt," she said, "before Charley is ruined, I will make
them repay the loan. They would have to if I insisted, for they would
never dare let me tell that tale."
Once more her laugh rang harshly through the uproar of the hail. "Oh,"
she said, "Charley would pour out his blood for me, and what do I owe
my father and Jimmy but a badge of shame?"
She was shaking with passion and very white in face. Eveline Annersly at
last realised how deeply the shame had bitten before love had come to
lessen the smart of it. The girl's temperament had been, as she knew,
distinctly virginal, and it was, perhaps, not astonishing, under the
circumstances, that she had at first shrunk from her husband almost with
hatred, and certainly with instinctive repulsion. Indeed, it was clear
to Eveline Annersly that had not Leland been what he was, a man
accustomed to restraint, she would in all probability have continued to
hate him until one of them died. Yet the contrast between the girl who
had always borne herself with a chilling serenity at Barrock-holme and
the passionate woman who crouched at her side was a very wonderful
thing.
Then suddenly the wind fell, and the sound of the hail commenced to die
away. It no longer roared upon the shingles, but sank in a long
diminuendo, drawing further and further away across the prairie. There
was a deep impressive stillness as it ceased altogether.
Carrie rose abruptly. "I'm going out," she said in a strained voice.
"Are you coming too?"
Eveline Annersly had little wish to go. The storm had left her shaken
and unwilling to move, but she forced herself to get up, for it seemed
that Carrie might have need of her. So they went out together. There was
now a little light in the sky, and the bluff showed up black and sharp
against it. The air was fresh and chill. Carrie, however, noticed
nothing as she moved swiftly through the wheat, through the melting ice
that lay thickly upon the sod. Other shadowy figures were also moving in
the same direction, and there was a murmur of voices when at last she
stopped.
"It's Mrs. Leland," said somebody, and the group of men drew back a
little.
Then Carrie caught her breath with a sob, for the tall wheat had gone,
and, so far as she could see, ruin was spread across the belt of
ploughing. The green blades lay smashed and torn upon the beaten soil.
The crop had vanished under the dread reaping of the hail. The light was
growing clearer, and it seemed to Eveline Annersly, who remembered how
the roar had suggested the beat of horses' hoofs, that instead of a
brigade of cavalry, an army division, with guns and transport, had
passed that way through the grain. Then something in the fancy struck
her as especially apposite, and she turned to Carrie, who stood rigid,
as though turned to stone.
"Look!" she said; "it isn't everywhere the same."
A man came up, and she recognised him as Gallwey. He apparently heard
her, for he beckoned to them.
"Will you come forward, Mrs. Leland?" he said. "We have a good deal to
be thankful for."
They went with him a hundred yards or so. Then Carrie gasped at what she
saw in the growing light of dawn.
"Oh," she cried joyously, "it hasn't reached the rest of it!"
"No," said Gallwey, "we are on the dividing line. I don't know how many
bushels it has reaped, but, by comparison, it is not enough to worry
about. A little wonderful. Still, I believe it's not unusual, and I have
seen very much the same thing once before."
"Is there no more of the wheat damaged?" asked Carrie, and there was
still a tension in her voice.
"Not a blade," said Gallwey. "I've been all round."
Then all the strength seemed to leave the girl. Moving shakily, with her
hand on Eveline Annersly's arm, she turned towards the house, as the
pearly greyness crept into the eastern sky. Eveline Annersly said
nothing, for she could feel that her companion was trembling, and hear
her catch her breath. Carrie stopped when they reached the homestead,
and looked eastward with tear-dimmed eyes.
"Ah," she said, "I wonder why this favour was shown me. I felt I had
ruined Charley a little while ago."
Then she pulled herself together. "Aunt Eveline," she said softly, "did
you ever hate and despise yourself?"
Eveline Annersly said nothing, but she smiled with comprehension in her
eyes, for she understood what was in Carrie Leland's mind.