THE DIGNITY (?) OF TOIL
By such imperceptible degrees that she was scarce aware of it, Stella
took her place as a cog in her brother's logging machine, a unit in the
human mechanism which he operated skilfully and relentlessly at top
speed to achieve his desired end--one million feet of timber in
boomsticks by September the first.
From the evening that she stepped into the breach created by a drunken
cook, the kitchen burden settled steadily upon her shoulders. For a week
Benton daily expected and spoke of the arrival of a new cook. Fyfe had
wired a Vancouver employment agency to send one, the day he took Jim
Renfrew down. But either cooks were scarce, or the order went astray,
for no rough and ready kitchen mechanic arrived. Benton in the meantime
ceased to look for one. He worked like a horse, unsparing of himself,
unsparing of others. He rose at half-past four, lighted the kitchen
fire, roused Stella, and helped her prepare breakfast, preliminary to
his day in the woods. Later he impressed Katy John into service to wait
on the table and wash dishes. He labored patiently to teach Stella
certain simple tricks of cooking that she did not know.
Quick of perception, as thorough as her brother in whatsoever she set
her hand to do, Stella was soon equal to the job. And as the days
passed and no camp cook came to their relief, Benton left the job to her
as a matter of course.
"You can handle that kitchen with Katy as well as a man," he said to her
at last. "And it will give you something to occupy your time. I'd have
to pay a cook seventy dollars a month. Katy draws twenty-five. You can
credit yourself with the balance, and I'll pay off when the contract
money comes in. We might as well keep the coin in the family. I'll feel
easier, because you won't get drunk and jump the job in a pinch. What do
you say?"
She said the only possible thing to say under the circumstances. But she
did not say it with pleasure, nor with any feeling of gratitude. It was
hard work, and she and hard work were utter strangers. Her feet ached
from continual standing on them. The heat and the smell of stewing meat
and vegetables sickened her. Her hands were growing rough and red from
dabbling in water, punching bread dough, handling the varied articles of
food that go to make up a meal. Upon hands and forearms there stung
continually certain small cuts and burns that lack of experience over a
hot range inevitably inflicted upon her. Whereas time had promised to
hang heavy on her hands, now an hour of idleness in the day became a
precious boon.
Yet in her own way she was as full of determination as her brother. She
saw plainly enough that she must leave the drone stage behind. She
perceived that to be fed and clothed and housed and to have her wishes
readily gratified was not an inherent right--that some one must foot
the bill--that now for all she received she must return equitable value.
At home she had never thought of it in that light; in fact, she had
never thought of it at all. Now that she was beginning to get a
glimmering of her true economic relation to the world at large, she had
no wish to emulate the clinging vine, even if thereby she could have
secured a continuance of that silk-lined existence which had been her
fortunate lot. Her pride revolted against parasitism. It was therefore a
certain personal satisfaction to have achieved self-support at a stroke,
insofar as that in the sweat of her brow,--all too literally,--she
earned her bread and a compensation besides. But there were times when
that solace seemed scarcely to weigh against her growing detest for the
endless routine of her task, the exasperating physical weariness and
irritations it brought upon her.
For to prepare three times daily food for a dozen hungry men is no mean
undertaking. One cannot have in a logging camp the conveniences of a
hotel kitchen. The water must be carried in buckets from the creek near
by, and wood brought in armfuls from the pile of sawn blocks outside.
The low-roofed kitchen shanty was always like an oven. The flies swarmed
in their tens of thousands. As the men sweated with axe and saw in the
woods, so she sweated in the kitchen. And her work began two hours
before their day's labor, and continued two hours after they were done.
She slept, like one exhausted and rose full of sleep-heaviness, full of
bodily soreness and spiritual protest when the alarm clock raised its
din in the cool morning.
"You don't like thees work, do you, Mees Benton?" Katy John said to her
one day, in the soft, slurring accent that colored her English. "You
wasn't cut out for a cook."
"This isn't work," Stella retorted irritably. "It's simple drudgery. I
don't wonder that men cooks take to drink."
Katy laughed.
"Why don't you be nice to Mr. Abbey," she suggested archly. "He'd like
to give you a better job than thees--for life. My, but it must be nice
to have lots of money like that man's got, and never have to work."
"You'll get those potatoes peeled sooner if you don't talk quite so
much, Katy," Miss Benton made reply.
There was that way out, as the Siwash girl broadly indicated. Paul Abbey
had grown into the habit of coming there rather more often than mere
neighborliness called for, and it was palpable that he did not come to
hold converse with Benton or Benton's gang, although he was "hail
fellow" with all woodsmen. At first his coming might have been laid to
any whim. Latterly Stella herself was unmistakably the attraction. He
brought his sister once, a fair-haired girl about Stella's age. She
proved an exceedingly self-contained young person, whose speech during
the hour of her stay amounted to a dozen or so drawling sentences. With
no hint of condescension or superciliousness, she still managed to
arouse in Stella a mild degree of resentment. She wore an impeccable
pongee silk, simple and costly, and _her_ hands had evidently never
known the roughening of work. In one way and another Miss Benton
straightway conceived an active dislike for Linda Abbey. As her
reception of Paul's sister was not conducive to chumminess, Paul did not
bring Linda again.
But he came oftener than Stella desired to be bothered with him. Charlie
was beginning to indulge in some rather broad joking, which offended and
irritated her. She was not in the least attracted to Paul Abbey. He was
a nice enough young man; for all she knew, he might be a concentration
of all the manly virtues, but he gave no fillip to either her
imagination or her emotions. He was too much like a certain type of
young fellow she had known in other embodiments. Her instinct warned her
that stripped of his worldly goods he would be wholly commonplace. She
could be friends with the Paul Abbey kind of man, but when she tried to
consider him as a possible lover, she found herself unresponsive, even
amused. She was forced to consider it, because Abbey was fast
approaching that stage. It was heralded in the look of dumb appeal that
she frequently surprised in his gaze, by various signs and tokens, that
Stella Benton was too sophisticated to mistake. One of these days he
would lay his heart, and hand at her feet.
Sometimes she considered what her life might be if she should marry him.
Abbey was wealthy in his own right and heir to more wealth. But--she
could not forbear a wry grimace at the idea. Some fateful hour love
would flash across her horizon, a living flame. She could visualize the
tragedy if it should be too late, if it found her already bound--sold
for a mess of pottage at her ease. She did not mince words to herself
when she reflected on this matter. She knew herself as a creature of
passionate impulses, consciously resenting all restraint. She knew that
men and women did mad things under the spur of emotion. She wanted no
shackles, she wanted to be free to face the great adventure when it
came.
Yet there were times during the weeks that flitted past when it seemed
to her that no bondage could be meaner, more repugnant, than that daily
slavery in her brother's kitchen; that transcendent conceptions of love
and marriage were vain details by comparison with aching feet and
sleep-heavy eyes, with the sting of burns, the smart of sweat on her
face, all the never-ending trifles that so irritated her. She had been
spoiled in the making for so sordid an existence. Sometimes she would
sit amid the array of dishes and pans and cooking food and wonder if she
really were the same being whose life had been made up of books and
music, of teas and dinners and plays, of light, inconsequential chatter
with genial, well-dressed folk. There was no one to talk to here and
less time to talk. There was nothing to read except a batch of
newspapers filtering into camp once a week or ten days. There was not
much in this monster stretch of giant timber but heat and dirt and flies
and hungry men who must be fed.
If Paul Abbey had chanced to ask her to marry him during a period of
such bodily and spiritual rebellion, she would probably have committed
herself to that means of escape in sheer desperation. For she did not
harden to the work; it steadily sapped both her strength and patience.
But he chose an ill time for his declaration. Stella had overtaken her
work and snared a fleeting hour of idleness in mid-afternoon of a hot
day in early August. Under a branchy alder at the cook-house-end she
piled all the pillows she could commandeer in their quarters and curled
herself upon them at grateful ease. Like a tired animal, she gave
herself up to the pleasure of physical relaxation, staring at a perfect
turquoise sky through the whispering leaves above. She was not even
thinking. She was too tired to think, and for the time being too much at
peace to permit thought that would, in the very nature of things, be
disturbing.
Abbey maintained for his own pleasure a fast motorboat. He slid now into
the bay unheard, tied up beside the float, walked to the kitchen,
glanced in, then around the corner, and smilingly took a seat on the
grass near her.
"It's too perfect a day to loaf in the shade," he observed, after a
brief exchange of commonplaces. "Won't you come out for a little spin on
the lake? A ride in the _Wolf_ will put some color in your cheeks."
"If I had time," she said, "I would. But loggers must eat though the
heavens fall. In about twenty minutes I'll have to start supper. I'll
have color enough, goodness knows once I get over that stove."
Abbey picked nervously at a blade of grass for a minute.
"This is a regular dog's life for you," he broke out suddenly.
"Oh, hardly that," she protested. "It's a little hard on me because I
haven't been used to it, that's all."
"It's Chinaman's work," he said hotly. "Charlie oughtn't to let you stew
in that kitchen."
Stella said nothing; she was not moved to the defence of her brother.
She was loyal enough to her blood, but not so intensely loyal that she
could defend him against criticism that struck a responsive chord in her
own mind. She was beginning to see that, being useful, Charlie was
making use of her. His horizon had narrowed to logs that might be
transmuted into money. Enslaved himself by his engrossing purposes, he
thought nothing of enslaving others to serve his end. She had come to a
definite conclusion about that, and she meant to collect her wages when
he sold his logs, collect also the ninety dollars of her money he had
coolly appropriated, and try a different outlet. If one must work, one
might at least seek work a little to one's taste. She therefore
dismissed Abbey's comment carelessly:
"Some one has to do it."
A faint flush crept slowly up into his round, boyish face. He looked at
her with disconcerting steadiness. Perhaps something in his expression
gave her the key to his thought, or it may have been that peculiar
psychical receptiveness which in a woman we are pleased to call
intuition; but at any rate Stella divined what was coming and would have
forestalled it by rising. He prevented that move by catching her hands.
"Look here, Stella," he blurted out, "it just grinds me to death to see
you slaving away in this camp, feeding a lot of roughnecks. Won't you
marry me and cut this sort of thing out? We'd be no end good chums."
She gently disengaged her hands, her chief sensation one of amusement,
Abbey was in such an agony of blushing diffidence, all flustered at his
own temerity. Also, she thought, a trifle precipitate. That was not the
sort of wooing to carry her off her feet. For that matter she was quite
sure nothing Paul Abbey could do or say would ever stir her pulses. She
had to put an end to the situation, however. She took refuge in a
flippant manner.
"Thanks for the compliment, Mr. Abbey," she smiled. "But really I
couldn't think of inflicting repentance at leisure on you in that
offhand way. You wouldn't want me to marry you just so I could resign
the job of chef, would you?"
"Don't you like me?" he asked plaintively.
"Not that way," she answered positively.
"You might try," he suggested hopefully. "Honest, I'm crazy about you.
I've liked you ever since I saw you first. I wouldn't want any greater
privilege than to marry you and take you away from this sort of thing.
You're too good for it. Maybe I'm kind of sudden, but I know my own
mind. Can't you take a chance with me?"
"I'm sorry," she said gently, seeing him so sadly in earnest. "It isn't
a question of taking a chance. I don't care for you. I haven't got any
feeling but the mildest sort of friendliness. If I married you, it would
only be for a home, as the saying is. And I'm not made that way. Can't
you see how impossible it would be?"
"You'd get to like me," he declared. "I'm just as good as the next man."
His smooth pink-and-white skin reddened again.
"That sounds a lot like tooting my own horn mighty strong," said he.
"But I'm in dead earnest. If there isn't anybody else yet, you could
like me just as well as the next fellow. I'd be awfully good to you."
"I daresay you would," she said quietly. "But I couldn't be good to you.
I don't want to marry you, Mr. Abbey. That's final. All the feeling I
have for you isn't enough for any woman to marry on."
"Maybe not," he said dolefully. "I suppose that's the way it goes. Hang
it, I guess I was a little too sudden. But I'm a stayer. Maybe you'll
change your mind some time."
He was standing very near her, and they were both so intent upon the
momentous business that occupied them that neither noticed Charlie
Benton until his hail startled them to attention.
"Hello, folks," he greeted and passed on into the cook shanty, bestowing
upon Stella, over Abbey's shoulder, a comprehensive grin which nettled
her exceedingly. Her peaceful hour had been disturbed to no purpose. She
did not want to love or be loved. For the moment she felt old beyond her
years, mature beyond the comprehension of any man. If she had voiced her
real attitude toward Paul Abbey, she would have counseled him to run and
play, "like a good little boy."
Instead she remarked: "I must get to work," and left her downcast
suitor without further ceremony.
As she went about her work in the kitchen, she saw Abbey seat himself
upon a log in the yard, his countenance wreathed in gloom. He was
presently joined by her brother. Glancing out, now and then, she made a
guess at the meat of their talk, and her lip curled slightly. She saw
them walk down to Abbey's launch, and Charlie delivered an encouraging
slap on Paul's shoulder as he embarked. Then the speedy craft tore out
of the bay at a headlong gait, her motor roaring in unmuffled exhaust,
wide wings of white spray arching off her flaring bows.
"The desperate recklessness of thwarted affection--fiddlesticks!" Miss
Benton observed in sardonic mood. Her hands were deep in pie dough. She
thumped it viciously. The kitchen and the flies and all the rest of it
rasped at her nerves again.
Charlie came into the kitchen, hunted a cookie out of the tin box where
such things were kept, and sat swinging one leg over a corner of the
table, eying her critically while he munched.
"So you turned Paul down, eh?" he said at last. "You're the prize chump.
You've missed the best chance you'll ever have to put yourself on Easy
Street."