Worse than Her Fears
A TIMBER house, a barn, two sheds, and a fenced enclosure, that was all,
and they stood black specks on the vast snowfield, visible for miles
before they were reached.
“There you are, that is home!” exclaimed Tom Ellis, pointing away to the
dots on the horizon, and at the same moment the pair of horses quickened
their pace, as if they too had seen and understood that yonder was the
end of the journey.
Bertha thrust her head a little forward and peered and peered; but she
was so nearly blinded with the glare of the snow, that dots on the
horizon were quite invisible to her.
“It is home, sweet home,” chanted Tom Ellis, in a musical baritone. He
was a cheerful soul, with strong faith but little imagination, and those
black dots on the distant horizon encompassed his world. “Cousin Bertha,
I hope you are going to be very happy with us at Duck Flats.”
“Thank you,” replied Bertha, in a strictly non-committal tone. But all
her heart was crying out against the monotonous ugliness of a landscape
that had no hidden things, no mystery—which, after all, is the charm of
nature—and nothing that appealed to the imagination in the slightest
degree.
“It is a great land,” said Tom, with a sweep of his arm that included
the whole horizon from sky to sky.
“It is certainly very big,” said Bertha, wondering if that were the
right thing to say, and then she ventured a question: “What do you grow?
I mean, what is there under the snow—grass?”
“Wheat is what I grow,” replied Tom, with a thrill of pride in his tone;
for to him the man who grew wheat was a public benefactor. It was not
his own profit that was secured merely, but the good of the world at
large, since everyone needed wheat in some form or other.
“And is it all one big field?” she asked, “or are there fences under the
snow?”
“Except for the fence round the house, there is not a fence for ten
miles. The land is not all mine, of course; but we all grow wheat in
this district, and a ridge thrown up with the plough is boundary
enough,” he answered serenely.
“I should have thought that mixed farming would have paid better. I
don’t think that I should like to put all my eggs in one basket,” said
Bertha, with a little shrug of her shoulders under her wraps. “Suppose
the wheat should fail for one year?”
“Then I should fail too, and pretty quickly, I can tell you. But don’t
talk about it; the bare idea of such a thing gets on my nerves
sometimes, and then I can’t sleep in the nights,” he answered.
“But if you feel like that, why do you take such a risk?” persisted
Bertha, who could not understand this sort of vicarious tribulation.
“Because the profits are greater, and there is less outlay in
proportion,” he replied. “I grow wheat, and I grow nothing else. Very
well, then, I only need the implements for wheat-growing, and most of
them I can hire at reasonable rates, which pays me, don’t you see. Then,
when my wheat is harvested and thrashed, my cares for the year are over,
and I have nothing to do but to plough for next year’s crop. Of course,
the thing can’t go on for always, for it stands to reason that you can’t
grow the same crop year after year without the ground becoming
impoverished. When that time comes, however, I shall sell the land and
move on into a new district, where I can start afresh. That is the way
that money is made, little cousin. There is risk in it, I grant you, but
that is half the fun; it takes from the dead-level monotony of the
affair.”
“And does Grace like that sort of thing—the risk, I mean, and being
dragged up by the roots, and dumped down in a fresh place when the
impoverished land makes a move necessary?” asked Bertha, with some
curiosity. She was thinking that if it were herself she should just hate
it all.
Tom Ellis shook his head with a merry laugh. “I am afraid that my wife
got some very stodgy, old-fashioned notions from living so long in Nova
Scotia. Why, she was even saying the other day that she meant to have a
flower garden next summer, an awful waste of ground, really, but you
can’t get women to be practical. And she insists on my keeping a cow!”
“But why shouldn’t you keep a cow?” asked Bertha, in a puzzled tone,
quite unable to see where the enormity of such a course came in.
He laughed again, and told her that she would understand the situation
better when she had lived eight or nine years on the prairies.
“Which I never, never will, if by any means in my power I can get away!”
said Bertha; but she said it to herself, being too sensitive regarding
the feelings of other people to let one word of her deep discontent show
itself as yet.
The door was flung open as the horses drew up with a flourish before the
house, and Mrs. Ellis appeared on the threshold, her arms stretched out
in eager welcome.
“Oh, Bertha, little Bertha, can it really be you! My dear, my dear, it
is almost too good to be true!” she cried, and there was so much of
downright breakdown in the voice of Grace, that Bertha caught her breath
sharply, and at the same moment looked anxiously round, hoping that Tom
Ellis did not hear.
But he was hauling the baggage out of the sledge, and was much too busy
to notice how near to breakdown his wife had come.
“Oh, what a lot of children! I mean, what a lot they look altogether,”
said Bertha, as she was half-led, half-dragged into a room which seemed
to be full of babies.
“Yes, are they not darlings? This is Dicky, my eldest, a very bad boy
mostly, at other times very good indeed; then comes Molly, who always
reminds me of you when you were a baby. After her there are Jimmy, Sue,
and Baby Noll, who will be a year old on Christmas Day. Now, children,
just give Auntie Bertha the very nicest welcome that you can manage.”
But the small people were much too shy to make any demonstration of
welcome. Dicky and Molly stared at her from solemn eyes, which to Bertha
seemed to have a disapproving stare; while the twins, Jimmy and Sue, who
were two years old, burst into howls of protest when she wanted to kiss
them, and the fat baby swelled the chorus.
Bertha’s heart grew heavy with secret dismay. She had so little
first-hand knowledge of children, and she wondered how it would be
possible to endure the long months of winter shut into a small house
with so many crying babies. Perhaps if she had not been so very tired
with her long journey, and the wearing strain of the time when they were
snowed-up on the western fork, things would not have seemed quite so
dreary or so hopelessly hard to bear.
“Oh, my dear, my dear, you cannot think what joy it is to have you
here!” cried Grace again. “I had no idea how much I loved you all until
I came away, and you cannot think how much I have longed for a sight of
some of the dear home faces. But you have altered so much that I should
not have known you, and you look so quiet, though you were such a
restless, fidgety child, never content to sit still for more than two
minutes at the stretch. Your father used to call you ‘Little
Quicksilver’, and that is what you were.”
“I am afraid that I must have outgrown the character, then, with my
flapper frocks, for I am not a bit quick at anything now, and the girls
would tell you the same,” replied Bertha ruefully.
“Oh, what nonsense! You cannot really expect me to believe that a Doyne
could be slow at anything, except in the matter of thinking evil of
one’s neighbour,” said Grace, with a laugh. “And you are only a flapper
still, for the matter of that. How old are you—seventeen?”
“Almost eighteen, but I feel quite thirty,” Bertha answered, with a
serious air.
“Wait until you are thirty, then the chances are that you will feel only
about thirteen. Oh, I know what girls are like, especially girls with
brains, and you were due to be the genius of the family!” said Mrs.
Ellis, as she swept the crying twins up from the floor with one arm, and
picked up the baby with the other, upon which ensued a great calm, for
even a stranger was tolerable when viewed from the safe vantage-ground
of mother’s arms. Little Dick and Molly had retired into private life
behind her chair, and so the whole family watched Bertha take off her
wraps, very much enjoying the spectacle.
“It is Hilda who is the clever one,” said Bertha modestly, “and Anne is
very nice-looking, but I have neither beauty nor brains.”
Mrs. Ellis leaned back with her armful of babies and surveyed her young
cousin critically. Then she said, with her head held a little on one
side: “You are certainly not plain, or, in other words, ugly; and I
should say that in a year or two you will probably be rather
nice-looking in a quiet, distinguished sort of way. Anne, of course, is
downright handsome, but she was always good-looking, even as a child.
Hilda is smart and clever, but she is not a genius, though she will make
her way in the world, because she is careful and painstaking. She has
also a great deal of tact, which, after all, goes further than genius.”
“How well you know them both!” cried Bertha, and half against her will,
for at this stage she did not even want to be happy. A feeling of home
peace stole into her heart, and she felt that however much she might
detest the flat monotony of the prairie, or feel the irksomeness of that
little house packed with noisy, crying babies, she could not be wholly
unhappy where Grace was.
“Of course, I know them well. Think how your home was my home, and your
people were my people,” said Mrs. Ellis. “It was a very dear home, too.
But here am I talking and talking, while I have never showed you your
room. I am so very sorry, dear, that we could not give you a room to
yourself, and I have made Tom promise that he will build a room on at
one end next summer, between seeding and harvest, so that you may have a
little spot quite to yourself; but until then I am afraid that you will
have to put up with Dicky and Molly as room mates.”
Bertha’s heart went right down into her boots as she followed Grace into
the smaller of the two bedrooms, which was all that the house contained.
She had expected, at the very least, to have a room to herself, and to
know that never for one hour in the twenty-four could she be sure of
uninvaded privacy was a blow indeed. But it had to be borne, and for the
sake of the kind eyes that were on her she bravely hid the trouble, so
that Grace, shrewd though she was, did not guess it.
Bertha had not expected Grace to be so kind. It was almost
disappointing, in fact, for she had strung herself up to the pitch of
heroic self-sacrifice, and lo! there was nothing in the way of sacrifice
demanded of her, except perhaps in the matter of not having a bedroom to
herself. Even that was rather an advantage than otherwise, if she had
but known it, for she was thus unconsciously put upon her honour in the
matter of keeping the little chamber tidy, and since habit stands for so
much, she was effectually cured of the shocking untidiness which had
been such a bone of contention in the old days between herself and her
sisters.
But she suffered in those long weeks of winter as she had never suffered
in her life before. The bare ugliness of the house and barn was a
positive pain to her eyes, which simply ached to look on things of
beauty. Then there was nothing in the dead level of the prairie to rest
the eyes. From the time she arrived at Duck Flats, in early November,
until late in April, it was white from one horizon to the other, and she
was forced into the continual wearing of tinted glasses to save herself
from going blind with the glare. She grew to hate the snow as she had
never hated it before, and one day she broke down in childish crying
over a little branch of an evergreen shrub which Tom Ellis had brought
from Rownton.
“Oh, please forgive me; I did not mean to be so silly!” she exclaimed,
when Grace chanced to find her in tears.
“My dear, I have cried over the bare ugliness of it all too often not to
be able to sympathize with anyone else. But it is strange how that
passes off, and one grows to find a beauty even in the flat monotony, at
least I have found it so,” said Mrs. Ellis, with a rapt look, which poor
Bertha could not understand or in any way appreciate.
“That is because you are content with your home and your children; they
are your world, and you do not want anything else!” she cried. “But with
me it is different, and I feel as if I would give almost everything that
I possess for the sight of a tree, or a hill, or a bit of rock-bound
shore. I have loved beautiful things all my life, and especially have I
loved beautiful scenery, and this is worse—far worse—than I ever
dreamed it would be.”
“Poor little girl!” murmured Grace, patting her in a soothing fashion;
then she said hopefully, “Do you know, Bertha, I should not be at all
surprised if this yearning of yours for beautiful things wakes up the
sleeping soul that is in you.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Bertha, in wide-eyed astonishment. She had
always imagined that her soul was extremely wideawake; indeed, it had
always seemed too much awake for her to do the practical things which
everyday life demanded of her.
“I mean that no one has seen the best of you yet, and that you do not
even know yourself what is in you. I believe that you are going to
surprise us all some day, and the very thing to bring out the best that
is in you is this same horrid monotony, as you call it.”
“In what way do you expect me to surprise you?” asked Bertha, pausing in
the sewing she was doing but indifferently well and looking at Grace,
while a thrill of hope quivered in her heart, for when people expected
anything of her, she mostly found that she could rise to it.
“Would it be a surprise if we knew?” demanded Grace, with a laugh. “I
expect that it will be a surprise to you when it comes.”