AGATHA DOES NOT FLINCH.
Next evening Wyllard sat with Mrs. Radcliffe in a big low-ceilinged
room at Garside Scar, looking about him with quiet interest. He had
now and then spent a day or two in huge Western hotels, but he had
never seen anything quite like that room. The sheer physical comfort
of its arrangements appealed to him, but after all he was not one who
had ever studied his bodily ease very much, and what he regarded as the
chaste refinement of its adornment had a deeper effect. Though he had
lived for the most part in the bush and on the prairie, he had been
endued with or had somehow acquired an artistic susceptibility.
The furniture was old, and perhaps a trifle shabby, but it was, as he
noticed, of beautiful design. Curtains, carpets, tinted walls, formed,
it seemed to him, a harmony of soft colouring, and there were scattered
here and there dainty works of art, little statuettes from Italy, and
wonderful Indian ivory and silver work. Then a row of low,
stone-ribbed windows pierced the front of the room, and looking out he
saw the trim garden lying in the warm evening light. Immediately
beneath the windows ran a broad gravelled terrace, which was apparently
raked smooth every day, with a row of urns in which hyacinths bloomed
upon its pillared wall. From the middle of it a wide stairway led down
to the wonderful velvet lawn, which was dotted with clumps of cupressus
with golden gleams in it, and beyond that clipped yews rose smooth and
solid as a rampart of stone.
It all impressed him curiously--the order and beauty of it, the signs
of loving care. It gave him a key, he fancied, to the lives the
cultured English led, for there was no sign of strain and fret and
stress and hurry here. Everything, it seemed, went smoothly with
rhythmic regularity, and though it is possible that a good many
Englishmen would have regarded Garside Scar as a very second-rate
country house, and seen in Major Radcliffe and his wife nothing more
than a somewhat prosy old soldier and a withered lady, old-fashioned in
her dress and views, this Westerner had what was, perhaps, a clearer
vision. He could imagine the Major standing fast at any cost upon some
minute point of honour, and it seemed to him that his lady might have
stepped down from some old picture with all the graces of an earlier
age and the smell of the English lavender upon her garments. Then he
remembered that, after all, Englishwomen lived somewhat coarsely in the
Georgian days, and that he had met hard-handed men grimed with dust and
sweat who could also stand fast by a point of honour in Western Canada.
Though the latter fact did not occur to him, he had, for that matter,
done it more than once himself.
Then he recalled his wandering thoughts as his hostess smiled at him.
"You are interested in all you see?" she asked frankly.
"Yes, madam," said Wyllard--and the word rose instinctively to his
lips, for it seemed to him the only fitting way to address her. "In
fact, I'd like to spend some hours here and look at everything. I'd
begin at the pictures and work right round."
His companion's smile suggested that she was not displeased.
"But you have been in London?"
"I have," said Wyllard. "I had one or two letters to folks there from
big flour shippers, and they did all they could to entertain me.
Still, their places were different; they hadn't the--charm--of yours.
It's something which I think could only exist in these still valleys
and in cathedral closes. It strikes me more because it is something
I've never been accustomed to."
The lady was interested, and fancied that she partly understood his
attitude.
"Your life is necessarily different from ours," she suggested.
Wyllard smiled. "It's so different that you couldn't realise it. It's
all strain and effort from early sunrise until after dusk at night.
Bodily strain of aching muscles, and mental stress in adverse seasons.
We scarcely think of comfort, and never dream of artistic luxury. The
dollars we raise are sunk again in seed and extra teams and ploughs."
"After all, a good many people are driven rather hard by the love of
money here."
"No," said Wyllard gravely, "that's not it exactly. At least, not with
most of us. It's rather the pride of wresting another quarter-section
from the prairie, taking--our own--by labour, breaking the wilderness.
You"--and he added this as though to explain that he could hardly
expect her to quite grasp his views--"have never been out West?"
His hostess laughed. "I have stayed down in the plains through the hot
season in stifling cantonments, and I have once or twice been in Indian
cholera camps. Besides, I have seen my husband sitting, haggard and
worn with fever, in his saddle holding back a clamorous crowd that
surged about him half-mad with religious fury. There were Hindus and
Moslems to be kept from flying at each others' throats, and at a
tactless word or sign of wavering either party would have pulled him
down."
"You'll have to forgive me, madam"--and Wyllard's gesture was
deprecatory, though his eyes twinkled. "The notion that we're the only
ones who really work, or, at least, do anything worth while, is rather
a favourite one out West. No doubt it's a delusion. I should have
known that all of us are born like that."
His hostess forgave him readily, if only for the "all of us," which
struck her as especially fortunate. A few minutes later there were
voices in the hall, and then the door opened, and the girl he had met
at the stepping stones came in. She was dressed differently, in
trailing garments which, it seemed to him, became her wonderfully, and
he noticed now the shapely delicacy of her hands and the fine, ivory
pallor of her skin. Then his hostess turned to him.
"I had better present you formally to Miss Ismay," she said. "Agatha,
this is Mr. Wyllard, who I understand has brought you a message from
Canada."
There was no doubt that Wyllard was blankly astonished, and for a
moment the girl was clearly startled, too.
"You!" was all she said.
[Illustration: "'You!' was all she said."
She, however, held her hand out before she turned to speak to Mrs.
Radcliffe, but it was a slight relief to both when somebody announced
that dinner was ready.
Wyllard sat next to his hostess, and was not sorry that he was only
called upon to take part in casual general conversation, though he
fancied once or twice that Miss Ismay was unobtrusively studying him.
It was also nearly an hour after the meal was over when Mrs. Radcliffe
left them alone in her little drawing-room.
"You have, no doubt, a good deal to talk about, and you needn't join us
until you're ready," she said. "The Major always reads the London
papers after dinner."
Agatha sat down in a low chair near the hearth, and it first of all
occurred to Wyllard, who took a place opposite her, that she was,
although of full stature, too delicate and dainty, too over-cultivated,
in fact, to marry Hawtrey. This was rather curious, since he had
hitherto regarded his comrade as a typical, well-educated Englishman;
but it now seemed to him that there was a certain streak of coarseness
in Gregory. The man, it suddenly flashed upon him, was self-indulgent,
and his careless ease of manner, which he had once liked, was rather
too much in evidence. In a few moments, however, Agatha turned to him.
"I understand that Gregory is recovering rapidly?" she said.
Wyllard assured her that this was the case, and Agatha said quietly,
"He wants me to go out to him."
Wyllard felt that if a girl of this kind had promised to marry him he
would not have sent for her but have come in person, if he had been
compelled to pledge his last possessions, or crawl to the tideway on
his hands and knees. For all that, he was ready to defend his friend.
"I'm afraid it's necessary," he said. "Gregory was quite unfit for
such a journey when I left, and he must be ready to commence the
season's campaign with the first of the spring. Our summer is short,
you see, and with our one-crop farming it's indispensable to get the
seed in early: in fact, he will be badly behind as it is."
This was not particularly tactful since, without intending it, he made
it evident that he felt his comrade had been to some extent remiss; but
Agatha smiled.
"Oh," she said, "I understand! You needn't labour the excuse. But
doesn't the same thing apply to you?"
"It certainly did. Now, however, things have become a little easier.
My holding's larger than Gregory's, and I have a foreman who can look
after it for me."
"Gregory said that you were a great friend of his."
Wyllard seized this opportunity. "He is a great friend of mine, and I
like to think it means the same thing. In fact, it's reasonably
certain that he saved my life for me."
"Ah!" said Agatha; "that is a thing he didn't mention. How did it come
about?"
Wyllard was glad to tell the story: he was anxious to say all he
honestly could in Hawtrey's favour.
"We were at work on a railroad trestle--a towering wooden bridge, in
British Columbia. It stretched across a deep ravine with great
boulders and a stream in the bottom of it, and we stood high up on a
staging close beneath the metals. A fast freight, a huge general
produce train, came down the track, with one of the new big locomotives
hauling it, and when the cars went banging by above us we could hardly
hold on to the bridge. Still, the construction foreman was a hustler,
and we had to get the spikes in. I was swinging the hammer when I felt
the plank beneath me slip. The train, it seems, had jarred the bolt we
had our lashings round loose. For a moment I felt that I was going
down into the gorge, and then Gregory leaned out and grabbed me. He
had only one free hand to do it with, and when he felt my weight one
foot swung out from the stringer he had sprung to. It seemed certain
that I would pull him with me, too. We hung like that for a space--I
don't quite know how long."
He paused for a moment, apparently feeling the stress of it again, and
there was a faint thrill in his voice when he went on.
"It was then," he said, "I knew just what kind of man Gregory Hawtrey
was. Anybody else would have let me go; but he held on. Then I got my
hand on some of the framing, and he swung me on to the stringer."
He saw the gleam in Agatha's eyes. "Oh!" she said, "that is just what
he must have done. He was like that always--impulsive, splendidly
generous."
Wyllard felt that he had succeeded, though he knew that there were men
on the prairie who called his comrade slackly careless, instead of
impulsive. Agatha, however, spoke again.
"But Gregory wasn't a carpenter," she said.
"In those days when dollars were scanty we had to be whatever we could.
There wasn't much specialisation of handicrafts out there then. The
farmer whose crop was ruined took up the railroad shovel, or borrowed a
saw from somebody and set about building houses, or anything else that
was wanted."
"Of course!" said Agatha. "Besides, he was always wonderfully quick.
He could learn any game by just watching it awhile. He did all he
undertook brilliantly."
It occurred to Wyllard that Gregory had, at least, made no great
success of farming; but that occupation, as practised on the prairie,
demands a good deal more than quickness and what some call brilliancy
from the man who undertakes it. He must, as they say out there,
possess the capacity for staying with it; the grim courage to hold fast
the tighter under each crushing blow, when his teams die, or the grain
shrivels under the harvest frost, or ragged ice hurtling before a
roaring blast does the reaping. It was, however, evident that this
girl had an unquestioning faith in Gregory Hawtrey, and once more
Wyllard felt compassionate towards her. He wondered if she would have
retained it had the man spent those four years in England instead of
Canada: for it was clear from the contrast between her and her picture
that she had grown in many ways since she had given her promise to her
lover. He had said what he could in Hawtrey's favour, but now he felt
that something was due to the girl.
"Gregory told me to explain what things are like out there," he said.
"I think it is because they are so different from what you are
accustomed to that he has waited as long as he has done. He wanted to
make them as easy as possible for you, and now he would like you to
realise what is before you."
He was almost astonished at the girl's comprehension, for she glanced
round the luxurious room with a faint smile.
"You look on me as part of--this? I mean it seems to you that I fit in
with my surroundings, and would only be in harmony with them?"
"Yes," said Wyllard gravely, "I think you fit in with them excellently."
Agatha laughed. "Well," she said, "I was once, to a certain extent,
accustomed to something similar; though, after all, one could hardly
compare the Grange with Garside Scar. Still, that was some time ago,
and I have earned my living for several years now. That counts for
something, doesn't it?"
She glanced down at her dress. "For instance, this is the result of a
good deal of self-denial, though the cost of it was partly worked off
in music lessons, and the stuff was almost the cheapest I could get. I
sang at concerts--and it was part of my stock-in-trade. After all, why
should you think me only capable of living in luxury?"
"I didn't quite go that far."
She laughed again. "Then is Canada such a very dreadful place? I have
heard of other Englishwomen going out there as farmers' wives. Do they
all live unhappily?"
"No," said Wyllard; "at least, they show no sign of it, and some of
them and the city-born Canadians are, I think, the salt of this earth.
Probably it's easy to be calm and gracious in such a place as
this--though I naturally don't know since I've never tried it--but when
a woman who toils from sunrise to sunset most of the year keeps her
sweetness and serenity, it's a very different and much finer thing.
But I'll try to answer the other question. The prairie isn't dreadful;
it's a land of sunshine and clear skies. Heat and cold--and we have
them both--don't worry one there. There's optimism in the crystal air.
It's not beautiful like these valleys, but it has its beauty. It's
vast and silent, and, though our homesteads are crude and new, once you
pass the breaking it's primevally old. That gets hold of one somehow.
It's wonderful after sunset in the early spring, when the little cold
wind's like wine, and it runs white to the horizon with the smoky red
on the rim of it melting into transcendental green. When the wheat
rolls across the foreground in ochre and burnished copper waves, it's
more wonderful still. One sees the fulfilment of the promise, and
takes courage."
"Then," said Agatha, who had scarcely suspected him of a capacity for
such flights as this, "what is there to shrink from?"
"In the case of a small farmer's wife, the constant, never-slackening
strain. There's no hired assistance; she must clean the house, and
wash, and cook--though it's not unusual for the men to wash the plates."
The girl was evidently not much impressed, for she laughed.
"Does Gregory wash the plates?" she asked.
Wyllard's eyes twinkled. "When Sproatly won't," he said. "Still, in a
general way they only do it once a week."
"Ah," said Agatha, "I can imagine Gregory hating it. As a matter of
fact, I like him for it."
"Then she must bake, and mend her husband's clothes. Indeed, it's not
unusual for her to mend for the hired man too. Besides that, there are
always odds and ends of tasks, but the time when you feel the strain
most is in the winter. Then you sit at night, shivering, as a rule,
beside the stove in an almost empty log-walled room, reading a book you
have probably read three or four times before. Outside, the frost is
Arctic; you can hear the roofing shingles crackle now and then; and you
wake up when the fire burns low. There's no life, no company, rarely a
new face, and if you go to a dance or supper somewhere, perhaps once a
month, you ride back on a bob-sled frozen almost stiff beneath the
robes."
"Still," said Agatha, "that does not last."
The man understood her. "Oh!" he said, "one makes progress--that is,
if one can stand the strain--but, as the one way of doing it is to sow
for a larger harvest and break fresh sod every year, there can be no
slackening down in the meanwhile. Every dollar must be guarded and
ploughed into the soil again."
He broke off, feeling that he had done all that could reasonably be
expected of him, and Agatha asked one question.
"A woman who didn't slacken could make the struggle easier for the man?"
"Yes," said Wyllard simply, "in every way. Still, she would have a
great deal to bear."
Agatha's face softened. "Ah," she said, "she would not grudge the
effort in the case of one she loved."
Then she looked up again with a smile. "I wonder," she added, "if you
really thought I should flinch."
"When I first heard of it, I thought it quite likely. Then when I read
your letter my doubts vanished."
He saw he had not been judicious, for there was, for the first time, a
trace of hardness in the girl's expression.
"He showed you that?" she asked.
"One small part of it," said Wyllard. "I want to say that when I saw
this house, and how you seemed fitted to it, my misgivings about
Gregory's decision troubled me once more. Now"--and he made a little
impressive gesture--"they have vanished altogether, and they'll never
come back again."
He spoke as he felt. This girl, he fancied, would feel the strain; but
it seemed to him that she had strength enough to bear it cheerfully.
In spite of her daintiness, she was one who, in time of stress, could
be depended on. He often remembered afterwards how they had sat
together in the little, luxuriously furnished room, she leaning back,
with the soft light on her delicately tinted face, in her big, low
chair. In the meanwhile she said nothing, and by and bye he looked up
at her.
"It's curious that I had your photograph ever so long, and never
thought of showing it Gregory," he said.
Agatha smiled. "I suppose it is," she admitted. "After all, except
that it might have been a relief to Major Radcliffe if he had met you
sooner, the fact that you didn't show it Gregory doesn't seem of any
particular consequence."
Wyllard was not quite sure of this. He had thought about this girl
often, and had certainly been conscious of a curious thrill of
satisfaction when he had met her at the stepping-stones a few days
earlier. That feeling had also suddenly disappeared when he had
learned that she was his comrade's promised wife. He had, however,
during the last hour or two made up his mind to think no more of her.
"Well," he said, "the next thing is to arrange for Mrs. Hastings to
meet you in London, or, perhaps, at the Grange. Her husband is a
Canadian, a man of education, who has quite a large homestead not far
from Gregory's. Her folks are people of station in Montreal, and I
feel sure that you'll like her."
They decided that he was to ask Mrs. Hastings to stay a few days at the
Grange, and then he looked at the girl somewhat diffidently.
"She suggests going in a fortnight," he said.
Agatha smiled at him. "Then," she said, "I must not keep her waiting."
She rose, and they went back together to join their hostess.