AGATHA'S DECISION.
It was with an expectancy which was slightly toned down by misgivings
that Hawtrey drove over to the homestead where Agatha was staying the
next afternoon. The misgivings were, perhaps, not unnatural, for he
had been chilled by the girl's reception of him on the previous day,
and her manner afterwards had, he felt, left something to be desired.
Indeed, when she drove away with Mrs. Hastings he had felt himself a
somewhat injured man.
His efforts to mend the harness, and extricate the waggon in the dark,
which occupied him for an hour, had, however, partly helped to drive
the matter from his mind, and when he reached his homestead rather late
that night he went to sleep, and slept soundly until sunrise, which was
significant. Hawtrey was, at least, a man who never brooded over his
troubles beforehand, and this was, perhaps, one reason why he did not
always cope with them successfully when they could no longer be avoided.
When he had made his breakfast he, however, became sensible of a
certain pique against both Mrs. Hastings and the girl, which led him to
remember that he had no hired man, and that there was a good deal to be
done. He decided that it might be well to wait until the afternoon
before he called on them, and for several hours he drove his team
through the crackling stubble. His doubts and irritation grew weaker
as he did so, and when at length he drove into sight of Hastings's
homestead, his buoyant temperament was commencing to reassert itself.
Clear sunshine streamed down upon the prairie out of a vault of
cloudless blue, and he felt that after all any faint shadow that might
have arisen between him and the girl could be readily swept away.
He was, however, a little less sure of this when he saw her. Agatha
sat near an open window, in a scantily furnished match-boarded room,
and she, at least, as it happened, had not slept at all. Her eyes were
heavy, but there was a look of resolution in them which seemed out of
place just then, and it struck him that she had lost the freshness
which had characterised her in England.
She rose when he came in, and then, to his astonishment, drew back a
pace or two when he moved impulsively towards her.
"No," she said, with a hand raised restrainingly, "you must hear what I
have to say, and try to bear with me. It is a little difficult,
Gregory, but it must be said at once."
The man stood still, almost awkwardly, looking at her with
consternation in his face, and for a moment she looked steadily at him.
It was a painful moment, for she was just then gifted with a clearness
of vision which she almost longed to be delivered from. She saw that
the impression which had brought her a vague sense of dismay on the
previous afternoon was wrong. The trouble was that he had not changed
at all. He was what he had always been, and she had merely deceived
herself when she had permitted her girlish fancy to endue him with
qualities and graces which he had, it seemed, never possessed. There
was, however, no doubt that she had still a duty towards him.
He spoke first with a trace of hardness in his voice.
"Then," he said, "won't you sit down. This is naturally a
little--embarrassing--but I'll try to listen."
Agatha sank into a seat by the open window, for she felt physically
worn-out, and there was a task she shrank from before her.
"Gregory," she said, "I feel that we have come near making what might
prove to be a horrible mistake."
"We?" said Hawtrey, while the blood rose into his weather-darkened
face. "That means both of us."
"Yes," said Agatha, with a quietness that cost her an effort.
Hawtrey spread his hands out forcibly. "Do you want me to admit that
I've made one?"
"Are you quite sure you haven't?"
She flung the question at him sharply in tense apprehension, for, after
all, if the man was sure of himself, there was only one course open to
her. He leaned upon the table, gazing at her, and as he did so his
indignation melted, and doubts commenced to creep into his mind.
She looked weary, and grave, and almost haggard, and it was a fresh,
light-hearted girl he had fallen in love with in England. The mark of
the last two years of struggle was just then plain on her, though,
while he did not recognise this, it would pass away again. He tried to
realise what he had looked for when he had asked her to marry him, and
could not do so clearly; but there was in the back of his mind a
half-formulated notion that it had been a cheerful companion, somebody
to amuse him. She scarcely seemed likely to do the latter now. He
was, however, not one of the men who can face a crisis collectedly, and
his thoughts became confused, until one idea emerged from them. He had
pledged himself to her, and the fact laid a certain obligation upon
him. It was his part to over-rule any fancies she might be disposed to
indulge in.
"Well," he said stoutly, "I'm not going to admit anything of that kind.
The journey has been too much for you. You haven't got over it yet."
He lowered his voice, and his face softened. "Aggy, dear, I've waited
four years for you."
That stirred her, for it was certainly true, and his gentleness had
also its effect. The situation was becoming more and more difficult,
for it seemed impossible to make him understand that he would in all
probability speedily tire of her. She now recognised that, but to make
it clear that she could never be satisfied with him was a thing she
shrank from.
"How have you passed those four years?" she asked, to gain time.
For a moment his conscience smote him. He remembered the trips to
Winnipeg, and the dances to which he had attended Sally Creighton. It
was, however, evident that Agatha could have heard nothing of Sally.
"I spent them in hard work. I wanted to make the place more
comfortable for you," he said. "It is true"--and he added this with a
twinge of uneasiness, as he remembered that his neighbours had done
much more with less incentive--"that it's still very far from what I
would like, but things have been against me."
The speech had a far stronger effect than he could have expected, for
Agatha remembered Wyllard's description of what the prairie farmer had
to face. Those four years of determined effort and patient endurance,
which was how she pictured them, counted heavily against her in the
man's favour. It flashed upon her that, after all, there might have
been some warrant for the view she had held of Gregory's character when
he had fallen in love with her. He was younger then, there must have
been latent possibilities in him, but the years of toil had killed them
and hardened him. It was for her sake he had made the struggle, and
now it seemed unthinkable that she should renounce him because he came
to her with the dust and stain of it upon him. For all that, she was
possessed with a curious, sub-conscious feeling that she would involve
them both in disaster if she yielded. Something warned her that she
must stand fast.
"Gregory," she said, "I seem to know that we should both be sorry
afterwards if I kept my promise."
Hawtrey straightened himself with a smile she recognised. She had
liked him for it once, for it had then suggested the joyous courage of
untainted youth. Now, however, it struck her as only hinting at empty,
complacent assurance. She hated herself for the fancy, but it would
not be driven away.
"Well," he said, "I'm quite willing to face that hazard. I suppose
this diffidence is only natural, Aggy, but it's a little hard on me."
"No," said the girl sharply, with a strained look in her eyes, "it's
horribly unnatural, and that's why I'm afraid. I should have come to
you gladly, without a misgiving, feeling that nothing could hurt me if
I was with you. I wanted to do that, Gregory--I meant to--but I
can't." Then her voice fell to a tone that had vibrant regret in it.
"You should have made sure--married me when you last came home."
"But I'd nowhere to take you. The farm was only half-broken prairie,
the homestead almost unhabitable."
Agatha winced at this. It was, no doubt, true, but it seemed horribly
petty and commonplace. His comprehension stopped at such details as
these, and he had given her no credit for the courage which would have
made light of bodily discomfort.
"Do you think--that--would have mattered? We were both very young
then, and we could have faced our troubles and grown up together. Now
we're not the same. You let me grow up alone."
[Illustration: "'Do you think--that--would have mattered?'"]
Hawtrey spread his hands out. "I haven't changed."
He contented himself with that, and Agatha grew more resolute. There
was no spark of imagination in him, scarcely even a spark of the
passion which, if it had been strong enough, might have swept her away
in spite of her shrinking. He was a man of comely presence, whimsical,
and quick, as she remembered, at light badinage, but when there was a
crisis to be grappled with he somehow failed. His graces were on the
surface. There was no depth in him.
"Aggy," he added humbly, when he should have been dominantly forceful,
"it is only a question of a little time. You will get used to me."
"Then," and the girl clutched at the chance of respite, "give me six
months from to-day. It isn't very much to ask, Gregory."
The man wrinkled his brows. "It's a great deal," he answered slowly.
"I seem to feel that we shall drift further and further apart if once I
let you go."
"Then you feel that we have drifted a little already?"
"I don't know what has come over you, Aggy, but there has been a
change. I'm what I was, and I want to keep you."
Agatha rose and turned towards him rather white in face. "Then if you
are wise you will not urge me now."
Hawtrey met her gaze for a moment, and then made a sign of acquiescence
as he turned his eyes away. He recognised that this was a new Agatha,
one whose will was stronger than his. Yet he was half-astonished that
he had yielded so readily.
"Well," he said, "if it must be, I can only give way to you, but I must
be free to come over here whenever I wish." Then a thought seemed to
strike him. "But you may have to go away," he added, with sudden
concern. "If I am to wait six months, what are you to do in the
meanwhile?"
The girl smiled wearily. Now the respite had been granted her, the
question he had raised was not one that caused her any great concern.
"Oh," she said, "we can think of that later, I have borne enough
to-day. This has been a little hard upon me, Gregory."
"I don't think it has been particularly easy for either of us," said
Hawtrey, with a trace of grimness. "Anyway, it seems that I'm only
distressing you." He smiled wryly. "It's naturally not what I had
expected to do. I'll come back when I feel I've quite grasped the
situation."
He moved a pace or two nearer, and taking one of her hands swiftly
stooped and kissed her cheek.
"My dear," he said, "I only want to make it as easy as I can. You'll
try to think of me, favourably."
Then he went out and left her sitting with a troubled face beside the
open window. A little warm breeze swept into the almost empty room,
and outside a blaze of sunshine rested on the prairie. It was torn up
with wheel ruts about the house, for the wooden building rose abruptly
without fence or garden from the waste of whitened grass. Close to it
there stood a birch-log barn or stables, its sides curiously ridged and
furrowed where the trunks were laid on one another, roofed with wooden
shingles that had warped into hollows here and there. Further away
there rose another long building, apparently of sod, and a great
shapeless yellow mound with a domed top towered behind the latter. It
was most unlike a trim English rick, besides being bigger, and Agatha
wondered what it could be. As a matter of fact, it was a not uncommon
form of granary, the straw from the last thrashing flung over a
birch-pole framing.
Behind that there ran a great breadth of knee-high stubble, blazing
ochre and cadmium in the sunlight. It had evidently extended further
than it did, for a blackened space showed where a fire had been lighted
to destroy it. Here Hastings, clad in blue duck, with long boots, was
ploughing, plodding behind his horses, which stopped now and then when
the share jarred against a patch of still frozen soil. Further on two
other men silhouetted in blue against the whitened grass drove spans of
slowly moving oxen that hauled big breaker ploughs, and the lines of
clods that lengthened behind them gleamed in the sunlight a rich
chocolate-brown. Beyond them the wilderness ran unbroken to the
horizon.
Agatha gazed at it all vacantly, but the newness and strangeness of it
reacted upon her. She felt very desolate and lonely, and by and bye
remembered that she had still to grapple with a practical difficulty.
She could not stay with Mrs. Hastings indefinitely, and she had not the
least notion where to go or what she was to do. She was leaning back
in her chair wearily with half-closed eyes when her hostess came in and
looked at her with a smile that suggested comprehension. Mrs. Hastings
was thin, and seemed a trifle worn, but she had shrewd, kindly eyes.
Just then she wore a plain print dress which was dusted here and there
with flour.
"So you have sent him away?" she said.
It was borne in upon Agatha that she could be candid with this woman
who she fancied had already guessed the truth.
"Yes," she said, "for six months. That is, we are not to decide on
anything until they have expired. I felt we must get used to each
other. It seemed best."
"To you. Did it seem best to Gregory?"
A flush crept into Agatha's face. Though his acquiescence had been a
relief to her, she felt that after all he might have made a more
vigorous protest.
"He gave in to me," she said.
Mrs. Hastings looked thoughtful. "Well," she said, "I believe you were
wise, but that opens up another question. What are you going to do in
the meanwhile?"
"I don't know," said Agatha wearily. "I suppose I shall have to go
away--to Winnipeg, most probably. I could teach, I think."
"How are you and Gregory to get used to each other if you go away?"
Agatha made a little helpless gesture. "I hadn't looked at it in that
light."
"Are you very anxious to get used to him?"
Agatha shrank from the question; but there was a constraining
kindliness in her companion's eyes.
"I daren't quite think about it yet. I mean to try. I must try. I
seem to be playing an utterly contemptible, selfish part, but I could
not marry him--now!"
Her hostess quietly crossed the room, and sat down by her side.
"My dear," she said, "as I told you, I think you are doing right, and
in some respects I believe I know how you feel. Everybody prophesied
disaster when I came out to join Allen from a sheltered home in
Montreal, and at the beginning my life here was not easy to me. It was
all so different, and there were times when I was afraid, and my heart
was horribly heavy. If it hadn't been for Allen I think I should have
given in and broken down. He understood, however. He never failed me."
Agatha's eyes grew misty, and she turned her head away.
"Yes," she said, "that would make it wonderfully easier."
"You must forgive me," said her companion. "It was tactless, but I
didn't mean to hurt you. Well, one difficulty shouldn't give us very
much trouble. Why shouldn't you stay here with me?"
Agatha turned towards her abruptly with a relief in her face from which
it, however, faded again. She liked this woman, and she liked her
husband, but she remembered that she had no claim on them.
"Oh," she said, "it is out of the question."
"Wait a little. I'm proposing to give you quite as much as you will
probably care to do. There are my two little girls to teach, and I
think they have rather taken to you. I can scarcely find a minute to
do it myself, and, as you have seen, there is a piano which has after
all only a few of the notes broken. Besides, we have only one
Scandinavian maid who smashes everything that isn't made of indurated
fibre, and I'm afraid she'll marry one of the boys in a month or two.
It was only by sending the kiddies to Brandon and getting Mrs.
Creighton, a neighbour of ours, to look after Allen, who insisted on me
going, that I was able to get to Paris with some Montreal friends. In
any case, you'd have no end of duties."
"You are doing this out of--charity?"
Mrs. Hastings laughed. "Allen wrote some friends of his in Winnipeg to
send me anybody out a week or two ago."
The girl's eyes shone mistily. "Oh," she said, "you have lifted one
weight off my mind."
"I think," said Mrs. Hastings, "the others will also be removed in due
time."
Then she talked cheerfully of other matters, and Agatha listened to her
with a vague wonder, which was, however, not altogether justified, at
her good fortune in falling in with such a friend, for there are in
that country a good many men and women who resemble this farmer's wife
in one respect. Unfettered by conventions they stretch out an open
hand to the stranger and the outcast. Toil has brought them charity in
place of hardness, and still retaining, as some of them do, the culture
of the cities, they have outgrown all the petty bonds of caste. The
wheat-grower and the hired man eat together, his wife or daughter mends
the latter's clothes, and he, as the natural result of it, not
infrequently makes the farmer's cause his own. Rights are
good-humouredly conceded in place of being fought for, and the sense of
grievance and half-veiled suspicion are exchanged for an efficient
co-operation. It must, however, be admitted that there are also
farmers of another kind, from whom the hired man has occasionally some
difficulty in extracting his covenanted wages by personal violence.
That, too, fails now and then.
By and bye a team and a jolting waggon swept into sight, and Mrs.
Hastings rose when the man who drove it pulled his horses up.
"It's Sproatly; I wonder what has brought him here," she said, and as
the man who sprang down walked towards the house she gazed at him
almost incredulously.
"He's quite smart," she added. "I don't see a single patch on that
jacket, and he has positively got his hair cut."
"Is that an unusual thing in Mr. Sproatly's case?" Agatha asked.
"Yes," said Mrs. Hastings. "It's very unusual indeed. What is
stranger still, he has taken the old grease-spotted band off his hat,
after clinging to it affectionately for the last twelve months."
Agatha fancied that the soft hat, which fell shapelessly over part of
Sproatly's face, needed something to replace the discarded band; but in
another moment or two he entered the room. He shook hands with them
both, and then sat down and smiled.
"You are looking remarkably fresh, but appearances are not invariably
to be depended on, and it's advisable to keep the system up to par," he
said. "I suppose you don't want a tonic of any kind."
"I don't," said Mrs. Hastings resolutely; "Allen doesn't, either.
Besides, didn't you get into some trouble over that tonic?"
"It was the cough cure," said Sproatly with a grin. "I sold a man at
Lander's one of the large-sized bottles and when he had taken some he
felt a good deal better. Then he seems to have argued the thing out
like this: if one dose had relieved the cough, a dozen should drive it
out of him altogether, and he took the lot. He slept for forty-eight
hours afterwards, and when I came across him at the settlement he
attacked me with a club. The fault, I may point out, was in his logic.
Perhaps you would like some pictures. I've a rather striking oleograph
of the Deutcher Kaiser. It must be like him, for two of his subjects
recognised it. One hung it up in his shanty. The other asked me to
hold it out, and then pitched a stove billet through the middle of it.
He, however, produced his dollar; said he felt so much better after
what he'd done that he didn't grudge it."
"I'm afraid we're not worth powder and shot," said Mrs. Hastings. "Do
you ever remember our buying any tonics or pictures from you?"
"I don't, though I have felt that you ought to have done it," and
Sproatly, who paused a moment, turned towards Agatha with a little
whimsical inclination. "The professional badinage of an unlicensed
dealer in patent medicines may now and then mercifully cover a good
deal of embarrassment. Miss Ismay has brought something pleasantly
characteristic of the Old Country along with her."
His hostess disregarded the last remark. "Then if you didn't expect to
sell us anything, what did you come for?"
"For supper," said Sproatly cheerfully. "Besides that, to take Miss
Rawlinson a drive. I told her last night it would afford me
considerable pleasure to show her the prairie. We could go round by
Lander's and back."
"Then you will probably come across her somewhere about the straw-pile
with the kiddies."
Sproatly took the hint, and when he went out Mrs. Hastings laughed.
"You would hardly suppose that was a young man of excellent education?"
she said. "So it's on Winifred's account he has driven over; at first
I fancied it was on yours."
Agatha was astonished, but she smiled. "If Winifred favours him with
her views about young men he will probably be rather sorry for himself.
He lives near you?"
"No," said Mrs. Hastings; "in the summer he lives in his waggon, or
under it, I don't know which. Of course, if he's really taken with
Winifred he will have to alter that."
"But he has only seen her once--you can't mean that he is serious."
"I really can't speak for Sproatly, but it would be quite in keeping
with the customs of the country if he was."
A minute or two later Agatha saw Winifred in the waggon when it
reappeared from behind the strawpile, and Mrs. Hastings turned towards
the window.
"She has gone with him," she said significantly. "Unfortunately, he
has taken my kiddies too. If he brings them back with no bones broken
it will be a relief to me."