INTO THE FARTHER WEST
For the first time in his life Harris surrendered his purpose to the
judgment of his son, and as they drove homeward along the dusty trail
in the heat of the day the consciousness came home to him that Allan
was right. To have used his gun would, of course, have been madness;
he had never seriously intended doing anything so rash, although for
one impetuous moment his passion had made him irresponsible. And, as
he thought it all over, he concluded that nothing was to be gained by
pursuit of the runaways. There was only one west-bound train in the
day; he could not give chase until the morrow, and they would be able
to lead him by twenty-four hours as long as he cared to keep up the
pursuit. True, he might telegraph ahead to the police, but that meant
publicity, and would probably be ineffectual in the end. She had gone
of her own free will, and although his heart hurt even under his
anger, now that she had gone she might stay. She had left a good
home, a fond father, and a share in the family estate for a--hired
man--and she might now make the best of her bargain. Harris assured
himself, with absolute sincerity, that he had done his duty in the
matter, and that in exchange for all his kindness his daughter had
treated him very badly indeed.
During the drive homeward his thoughts persistently turned to the
share his wife had had in Beulah's departure, and his feeling toward
Mary grew more and more hostile. Not that he altogether disbelieved
her when she professed ignorance of the young couple's intention; he
could not go so far as to think that she had lied to him, but he was
inwardly convinced that she had at least an inkling of their plans,
and that, so far from attempting to dissuade them, she was really in
sympathy with their wild escapade. Harris was very fond of his wife,
who had shared with him all the hardships of pioneer life, and who,
he admitted, had been a faithful and devoted helpmeet, and her
desertion of him in the present crisis was therefore all the less to
be excused or condoned. He resolved, however, that there should be no
open breach between them; he would neither scold nor question her,
but would impress her with his displeasure by adopting a cold,
matter-of-fact, speak-when-your spoken-to attitude toward her.
Under the circumstances it was not remarkable that Harris's work
began to loom larger than ever in his life. The space left vacant by
his daughter he filled with extra energy driving the great ploughs
through the mellow summer-fallow. A new tank-man was engaged, and the
rumble of the engine was heard up and down the fields from early
morning until dark. From his wife he held aloof, speaking with
strained courtesy when speech was necessary. She, in turn, schooled
for years in self-effacement, hid her sorrow in her heart, and went
about her work with a resignation which he mistook for cheerfulness,
and which confirmed him in his opinion that she knew more of Beulah's
intentions than she had cared to admit. Only with Allan his relations
remained unchanged; indeed, the attachment between the two grew
deeper than ever. The young man avoided any reference to Beulah; what
he felt in his own heart he kept to himself, but the father shrewdly
guessed that he laid the whole blame on Travers.
So the summer wore on; the black bosom of the fallow field widened
day by day, and the smell of growing wheat filled the dew-laden
evening air. The picnic season, the time of athletic competitions,
baseball matches, and rural sociability, rolled by, but Harris
scarcely knew of its passing. He had long ago ceased to take any
personal interest in the frivolities of the neighbourhood; he saw in
picnics and baseball games only an unprofitable misuse of time, and
when he thought of them at all it was to congratulate himself that
Allan was not led away by any such foolishness. Finding no great
happiness in his own home, he had fallen into the way of walking over
to Riles's on Sunday afternoons, and the two spent many hours in
discussion of their proposed land-seeking expedition.
Meanwhile Mary plodded along with her housework, toiling doggedly
from five in the morning until half-past nine or ten at night.
Beulah's departure had left all the labours of the home upon her
hands; her husband had made no suggestion of securing help, and she
had not asked any. The new man made no offer to milk any of the cows;
a dozen hours in the field was day enough for him, and whatever time
was over he spent smoking cigarettes in the shelter of the barn.
Allan occasionally did help with the milking, and more frequently
with turning the separator, but it was so late when he stopped his
work in the field she was sorry for him, and tried to have the milk
cleared away before he arrived on the scene. One or two postcards she
had had from Beulah, but they brought no great information. They came
in the open mail; her husband was welcome to read them if he chose,
but as he had sought his own company exclusively since Beulah's
departure she made no attempt to force them upon him.
At last one morning came a letter, a big fat letter, left in by a
neighbour passing by, as the custom was for any settler going to town
to bring out the mail for those who lived along his route. She tore
the envelope open nervously and devoured its contents with hungry
eyes.
"My DEAR MOTHER,
"Here I am, in the shadow of the Rockies. That may sound poetical,
but it's a literal fact. It is still early in the evening, but the
sun has disappeared behind the great masses to the west, and the
valley which my window overlooks is filling up with blackness. The
Arthurses are pure gold, and I have told them everything. They don't
blame anyone, not even father. How is he? Slaving as usual, I
suppose.
"Well, I must tell you about my trip. When I left the house that
night I had no idea where I was going, but the simplest thing seemed
to be to go first to Plainville. The North Star led that way, and it
seemed a good guide to follow. As I walked the lights came out in the
Arctic sky--a great bow of them, swelling and fading in their
delicate tints. I watched them and plodded along, trying not to think
very much about anything.
"You've no idea how heavy that suit-case got, but I took my time, as
there was nothing to gain by reaching town before daylight. When I
got there it struck me it might be a good plan to have some
breakfast, so I walked round to Goode's boarding-house. Mrs. Goode
was bustling about, and received me with open arms. 'Well, my Land!
if it ain't Beulah Harris!' she exclaimed--she always called me
Beulah--'Goodness, child, what are you doing about this early in the
morning? But there, I needn't ask, knowin' what a worker your father
is. I'll be bound he drove you in before sunrise to lose no time with
his ploughin'. Well, that's what makes the mare go. I wish my man had
some of it--he's snorin' up on the second floor at this minute like
to lift the shingles. I often say to myself, 'For the little he does
and the lot he eats the Lord knows what keeps him so thin.' It's a
grievance of Mrs. Goode's that her husband won't fatten up; she
thinks it's a reflection on her cooking. 'And with your suit-case!
You'll be taking the train? West, is it, or East? But you'll be
hungry, child. Take off your things there while I see to my buns--I
always give the boarders hot buns for breakfast--' you know how she
rattles on. But she's a good soul, if a bit conceited over her
looking, and wouldn't take a cent for my keep either. Of course she
didn't wait for me to answer her questions, and she really suggested
the plan which I took. After breakfast I went over to the station,
and asked what the fare was to Arthurs' station; I found I had enough
money for the trip, and I bought a ticket without further ado.
"I won't try to tell you all about my trip--it would take a book. But
what a country it is! Of course I had learned in school that there
was about two feet of map between the Red River and the Rockies, but
there's only one way to know how big it is, and that's to travel it.
If you've got any imagination at all a trip over these enormous
prairies must set it stirring. For the most part there's no
settlement; not a house, nor stack, nor any sign of life. Pretty much
like Manitoba was, I guess, when you first saw it, but bigger, and
grander, and more suggestive of the future. You see, Manitoba has
made good, for all the doubters, and this bigger West will do the
same, on a bigger scale. As we rolled along through that unbroken
prairie, with here and there a great herd of horses or cattle in the
distance, I felt at last that I was really beginning to live. Not
that I was doing anything grander than running away from home, but
still that feeling came over me--the feeling that here was a country
where things were going to happen, and that I was going to play some
part in their happening.
"Well, if I ramble on like this it'll be a real book after all.
Calgary is the big cow-town of the West, just beginning to aspire to
higher--or lower (there's a real question there)--civilization, and
mixing schaps and silks on its streets in a strange struggle between
the past and the future. But my stay there was short, as I was able
to catch my branch train with little delay, and that night saw me at
Arthurs' nearest station. The homestead rush is on here in earnest;
the trains are crowded, mostly with Americans, and the hotels are
simply spilling over. They're a motley crowd, these homesteaders.
Down with us, you know, the settlers were looking for homes, and a
chance to make a living, but up here they're out for money--the long
green, they call it. Their idea is to prove up and sell their lands,
when they will either buy more or leave the country. But the great
point is that they are after money rather than homes. They belong to
a class which has been rushing for a generation ahead of a wave of
high land values--I heard a man say that in the train, and I made a
note of it--they're rovers by birth and training, with no great home
instinct! To them one place is as good as another--provided always
there's money to be made there--and one flag is almost as good as
another. Of course this will right itself in time; the first flood of
land-seekers are soil-miners, but the second are home-builders--the
man said that too; you see I'm picking things up; I want to know
about something besides the weather--and when that second flood comes
this country won't know itself.
"But to come back to the hotel; that's what I did when I had taken a
good walk about the little town, and admired myself almost homesick
looking at fine horses tied to hitching-posts and fine men swaggering
about in the abandon of cow-boy costumes. One thing I have learned
already, and the discovery shocked me a little at first; the cow-boy
considers himself better clay than the farmer--the 'sod-buster' he
calls him--and treats him with good-humoured contempt. I wanted to
ask someone about Arthurs, and I didn't like to inquire in the hotel.
There was a lot of drinking going on there. But near the door were
two young men talking, and I overheard one of them mention Arthurs'
name. Pulling myself together, I asked him if he could tell me where
Arthurs lived.
"'Yes, miss,' he answered, lifting a big hat and showing when he
spoke a clean set of teeth. 'It's twenty-five miles up the river.
Were you expecting him to meet you?'
"I explained that I had intended to drop in on them by surprise, but
I had had no idea they lived so far from town.
"'Oh, that's not far,' he said. 'Can you ride?'
"Everybody here rides horseback. It's the standard means of
locomotion. And the women ride astride. I was a bit shocked at first,
but you soon get used to it. But twenty-five miles is different from
a romp round the pasture-field, so I said I was afraid not.
"'Arthurs is coming down with the buck-board,' remarked the other
man. 'I passed him on the trail as I came in.'
"Sure enough, a little later Arthurs himself drew up at the hotel. I
wouldn't have known him, but one of the young men pointed him out,
and it would have done you good to see how he received me.
"'And you are Jack and Mary's daughter,' he said, taking both my
hands in his, and holding me at arm's length for a moment. Then,
before I knew it, he had drawn me up and kissed me. But I didn't
care. All of a sudden it seemed to me that I had found a real father.
It seems hard to say it, but that is how I felt.
"Well, he just couldn't keep away from me all evening. He showered me
with questions about you and father, which I answered as well as I
could, but I soon found I couldn't keep my secret, so I just up and
told him all. He was very grave, but not cross. 'You need time to
think things over, and to get a right perspective,' he said, 'and our
home will be yours until you do.'
"We drove home the next day, up a wonderful river valley, deep into
the heart of the foothills, with the blue mountains always beckoning
and receding before us. Mrs. Arthurs was as surprised and delighted
as he had been, and I won't try to tell you all the things she said
to me. She cried a little, too, and I'm afraid I came near helping
her a bit. You know the Arthurs lost their little girl before they
left Manitoba, and they have had no other children. They both seemed
just hungry.
"There's nothing so very fine about their home, except the spirit
that's inside it. I can't describe it, but it's there--a certain
leisurely way of doing things, a sense that they have made work their
servant instead of their master. And still they're certainly not
lazy, and they've accomplished more than we have. When they left
Manitoba in the early days, discouraged with successive frosts, they
came right out here into the foothills with their few head of stock.
Now their cattle are numbered in thousands, and they have about a
township of land. And still they seem to live for the pure happiness
they find in life, and only to think of their property as a secondary
consideration.
"Now I really must close. Mrs. Arthurs sends a note, and I'm quite
sure it's an invitation. Oh, mother, what could be lovelier! Now
don't say you can't. Father has plenty of money; let him hire a
housekeeper for a while. The change will do him good.
"Love to you, dearest, and to Allan, if he still thinks of me.
"BEULAH.
"P.S.--I forgot to mention that Jim Travers left Plainville on the
same train as I did. He could hardly believe his eyes when he saw me
there. I told him I was going West on a visit, but I don't know how
much he guessed. Said he was going West himself to take up land, but
he wanted to call on some friends first, and he got off a few
stations from Plainville. Between you and me, I believe he changed
his plan so that the incident--our being on the train together, you
know--could not be misunderstood if the neighbours got to know of it.
It would be just like Jim to do that."
With Beulah's letter was a short but earnest note from Lilian
Arthurs, assuring the mother of her daughter's welfare, and pressing
an invitation to spend the autumn in the glorious scenery and weather
of the foothill country. Mary Harris read both letters over again,
with frequent rubbing of her glasses. Love for her daughter, desire
to see her old friend once more, and growing dissatisfaction with
conditions at home, all combined to give weight to the invitation so
earnestly extended. "If I only could!" she said to herself. "If I
only could! But it would cost so much."
The dinner was late that day, and Harris was in worse humour than
usual. He had just broken a plough-beam, which meant an afternoon's
delay and some dollars of expense. When he had started his meal his
wife laid the full envelope before him. "A letter from Beulah," she
said.
Without a word he rose from the table, took the letter in his hand,
and thrust it into the kitchen range. A blue flame slowly cut round
the envelope; the pages began to curl like dry leaves in autumn, and
presently the withered ghost of the missive shrank away in the dull
glare of the coal fire behind.