The Lady Angella Luring arose at five in the
morning, put on overalls, sheepskin coat, woolen
gauntlets, and heavy overshoes. She tramped through
the steadily falling snow to her barn, which housed a
cow, a sow, a mare heavy in foal, a saddle horse and
the poultry.
The March winds that had raged all the previous
night had turned with the morning to a snowstorm, and
the flakes were now falling so heavily that the barn was
only just visible from the house as the woman rancher
plodded through the blinding flakes.
First she threw into the pig-pen the pails of swill
and mush she had brought from the house, then watered
the stock, no easy matter, for the pumped water froze
quickly in the trough, and she was forced to refill it
several times. That done, she climbed into the hayloft,
and with her pitchfork thrust down through the
openings the morning feed for the cow, carefully measured
chop from the bin for the mare, allowing half a
pail of oats and a bunch of hay for the saddle horse;
she threw to the chickens, hens that had followed hungrily
in her wake, a pan full of ground barley and
wheat seasoned with cayenne pepper, epsom salts and
bits of bones and eggshells.
Finally she went to her milking. The cow was fresh,
and she had a full pail. Half of this, however, she fed
to the restless little calf, nosing near its mother, and
trying to shake off the muzzle that Angella had snapped
on the night before in order to wean it. The task of
feeding the calf required patience and time, for the
restive little "dogie" nearly knocked over the pail, and
had to be taught how to drink by feeling the woman's
fingers thrust, wet with the milk, into its mouth. She
was more than an hour about her chores. With the
half-filled pail in one hand, she tramped back to the
house through the snow, falling now more heavily than
before.
Before leaving the house Angella had lit her fire, and
now the place was warm and snug, and the singing
kettle lent it an air of cheer. There was a certain
attractiveness about the poor shack on the prairie, in
spite of its rough, bare log walls and two wee windows.
Though she chose to wear men's clothing, and had cut
her hair like a man's, yet one had only to look about
that room to perceive that the eternal feminine had
persisted notwithstanding her angry and pitiful attempt
to quench it.
She had made most of the furniture herself, crude
pieces fashioned from willow fence posts and grocery
boxes, yet they betrayed a craftsman's talent, for the
chairs, though designed for use, were rustic and pretty,
and she had touched them in spots with bright red
paint. The table, over which a vivid red oilcloth was
nailed, made a bright patch of color in the room. Red,
in most places, for decorative purposes, can be used
only sparingly, but in a bleak log shack a splash of
this ruddy color gives both warmth and cheer. The
floor had been scrubbed until it was almost white, and
a big red-brown cowhide made a carpet near the couch,
which was covered with a calfskin. Indian ornaments
and beadwork, bits of crockery and pewter were on the
shelves that lined one side of the shack, and where also
she kept her immaculately shining kettles, cooking utensils
and dishes. A curtain of burlap sacks, edged with
scarlet cloth, hung before the bedroom doorway. The
pillows on the spotless bed were covered with cases made
of flour bags. A large grocers' box, into which shelves
had been nailed, was also covered with similar cloth and
served as a sort of dressing table. Two chairs, made
from smaller boxes, were padded with burlap, and a
triangular shelf with a curtain before it made a closet
in the corner of the room.
A huge gray cat followed the woman recluse about
the room, sleepily rubbing itself against her, and purring
with contentment when she picked it up in her
arms.
Angella made her breakfast of oatmeal and tea,
serving from the stove directly onto her plate. Her
cat nestled in her lap while she breakfasted, and she
smoothed it absently as she ate.
Time had smoothed out the lines on her face instead
of adding to them, and the strained look of suffering
in her eyes had given way to a healthy gaze. Her skin
had almost the fresh color of a girl's. Her hair had
grown abundantly, though it still was short and almost
gray, but its natural curliness lent her face a soft and
youthful air. There was no sign of the dread disease
which had once threatened her life. She looked normal
and wholesome as she sat at her table, her cat in her
lap, deep in a brown study. It would be hard to say
what filled Angella's thoughts when she was thus shut in
alone in her shack upon the prairie. She had ceased
long since to conjure up bitter visions of the man who
was responsible for her father's death and her own exile.
Her thoughts, at least, were no longer unbearably painful
as in those early days when first she had come to
Alberta, and many a day and night, shut in alone with
her dismal secret, she had wrestled in bitter anguish
with the crowding thoughts that came like ghosts to
haunt her.
However, even in winter she had little enough time
for thinking. Her life was crowded with work. When
she had finished her meal, she washed her dishes, made
her bed, kneaded the dough for her weekly baking, set
a pot of beans, soaked overnight, into the oven, and
prepared to go out again, this time to the pasture,
where her few head of stock "rustled" for their feed all
winter. A snowstorm at this time of year is always
dangerous for the breeding stock dropping their calves
with the approach of the spring. There were water
holes, too, in the frozen slough that had to be broken
in every day so that the cattle might have the water
they needed. Angella, ax in hand, opened the door of
her shack. A gale of wind and snow almost blinded her,
so that at first she did not see the Ford that was plowing
its way noisily and pluckily down the road allowance
that led to her house. At the honk of the doctor's
horn, which he worked steadily to attract her, she
peered out through the storm, and she turned to the
gate, where the car had now stopped.
She never encouraged the visits of Dr. McDermott,
who had saved her life when first she had come to
Alberta; but neither was she ever uncivil when he did
come. Time had accustomed her to his regular calls,
and, in truth, though she would not have admitted it
for anything in the world, she had come to look forward
to these visits, and to depend upon them for her news
of the world, which she so bitterly told herself she had
cast off forever.
Now, as his ruddy face was thrust through the curtains,
Angella, frowning slightly, tramped to the car.
"Are you strong enough to lend me a hand lifting
something?" asked the doctor.
"Certainly I'm strong enough. What do you mean?"
Dr. McDermott, out of the car now, unbuttoned the
back curtains, and revealed to the amazed Angella the
still heavily sleeping Nettie.
"There's a sick lass here," he said solemnly, "and a
lass in sore trouble, I'm thinking."
A strange expression had come into the face of Angella
Loring. Not so long since, it seemed to her, she
had seen as in a dream this girl now lying on the floor
of the doctor's car leaning over her, and had regarded
her with the tender, compassionate gaze of her own
mother. In the days of semi-consciousness that had
followed her first seizure, the Englishwoman could endure
the sight and touch of no one but the girl with
the Madonna face. Without realizing what was amiss,
all she knew was that Nettie was now as helpless as she
had been when the girl had cared for her, and without
a word or a question she helped the doctor lift Nettie
out of the car and to carry her into the house.
Angella Loring believed that there was nothing about
her of which this Scotch doctor approved. He came,
she thought, merely to exercise his abnormal habit of
interference in other folks' affairs and to find fault
with her chosen manner of life. She had at first, in her
desire to be alone, not hesitated to tell him she preferred
her own company to any other. He had barked
back that her taste was unnatural, and it would take
more than "a bitter-tongued lass" to drive him from
his duty. Questioned sarcastically as to what he conceived
his duty to be, he had replied solemnly, "To
keep an eye on you, lass, and to see that you come to
no harm."
Furious as this gratuitous resolve to care for her
had made the woman who believed she could fend for
herself in the world, his answer had nevertheless brought
the bitter tears to her angry eyes, so that she could
not find words for a retort. The doctor's intention to
protect the woman by no means made him lenient in
his judgment of her; he denounced her cut hair as outrageous;
her men's clothes as disgraceful, and her work
in the field as against nature. She secretly enjoyed
his explosion of rage when she took service at Bar Q.
No lass, declared the doctor, in her sober senses
would disfigure herself by cutting off her head the hair
that her Maker had planted there. No true woman
would wear a mon's clothes. Mere contact with a wild
brute like Bull Langdon would muddy any pure woman
in the land. Her obsession--which is what he termed
her aversion to his own sex--and her unnatural life
alone was a pathological matter, for which she needed
to be treated as for the unfortunate illness she had
contracted in London. Some day, he warned her, she
would thank him for the one cure as well as for the
other.
She let him talk on, usually disdaining to answer,
and she pursued her way undeterred by his wholesale
condemnation of her and her course of life.
Yet Angella Loring, holding a little baby in her arms
for the first time in her life, and looking down with
dewy eyes upon the small blonde head resting so helplessly
against her breast, could she have seen the face
of the country doctor as he looked at the cropped bent
head, would have known that all his thoughts of her
were not wholly hard.
Glaring up at him to hide the impending tears, she
almost surprised that look of grave tenderness on the
rough face of the man who had known her as a child.
"She doesn't want it," said Angella Loring. "Her
own child! Well, then, I'll keep it! It shan't want.
I'll care for it."
"It's a wee laddie--born before its time, and nane
too strong." He had a habit when unduly moved of
lapsing into Gaelic, and what he muttered was unintelligible
to the woman, wholly taken up with the baby
in her arms. Could she have understood him she
would have heard the doctor say that a woman who
could mother another woman's "bairn" would be a
good mother to her own.
Outside the snow was still heavily falling. Great
mounds were piling up on all sides. That world of
snow might have appalled the stranger, but to the
farmer it meant certain moisture in the soil. A spring
snowstorm was even more desirable for the land than
rain, as it melted gradually into the earth. Already
the sun was gleaming through the falling snowflakes,
and the intense cold had abated.
"Weel, weel, I'll be off for a while, lass. There's
much still to attend to."
"You can't go out in that storm," said Angella
roughly. "Wait, I'll get you something to eat. Not
even your Ford could plow through snow like that."
"Maybe not, and I'll not be taking the Ford."
"Well, I've no vehicle to lend you."
"I'll go afoot," said the doctor, wrapping his woolen
scarf about his neck, preparatory to going out.
"You're a fool to go out," said Angella crossly.
"Wait till you have a cup of coffee anyway."
"I'll be going just across the land, to the lad's cabin.
I heard last night that he was back."
"Who's cabin? What land?"
"Young Cyril Stanley's--the scallawag. I'll have
thot to say to him, I'm thinking, will bring him across
in a hurry."
"He needn't come here!" Angella had started up
savagely. "I don't want any man here, least of all a
dog like that who'd do such a thing to a girl. He can
keep away from my house. He's not fit to--to even
look at her now. No man is."
"Weel, weel, 'tis true, but we're all liable to mistakes,
ma'am, and young blood is hot and careless, and who
are we--you and I--to judge another? We must look
to our own consciences first, ma'am."
"Yes, stand up for him--defend him. You men all
hang together. I know you all, and I hate you. I----"
She broke off, for the doctor was looking at her with
such a strange look of mingled earnestness and tenderness,
that the stormy words died on her lips, and she
dropped her wet face upon the soft little one in her
arms.
Dr. McDermott closed the door softly.