_FARM PUPILS_.
June in Manitoba, when the tender green of grass and leaf is bathed in
the sparkling sunshine; when the first wild roses are spilling their
perfume on the air, and the first orange lilies are lifting their glad
faces to the sun; when the prairie chicken, intent on family cares,
runs cautiously beside the road, and the hermit thrushes from the
thickets drive their sweet notes into the quiet evening. It is a time
to remember lovingly and with sweet gratitude; a time when the love of
the open prairie overtakes us, and binds us fast in golden fetters.
There is no hint of the cruel winter that is waiting just around the
corner, or of the dull autumn drizzle closer still; there is nothing
but peace and warmth and beauty.
As the old "Cheyenne," the only sidewheeler on the Assiniboine,
churning the muddy water into creamy foam, made its way to the green
shore at Curry's Landing, Fred and Evelyn Brydon, standing on the
narrow deck, felt the grip of the place and the season. Even the
captain's picturesque language, as he directed the activities of the
"rousters" who pulled the boat ashore, seemed less like profanity and
more like figure of speech.
The twins had made several unfruitful journeys to the Landing for their
brother and his wife, for they began to go two days before the
"Cheyenne" was expected, and had been going twice a day since, all of
which had been carefully entered in their account book!
Their appearance as they stood on the shore, sneering at the captain's
directions to his men from the superior height of their nautical
experience, was warlike in the extreme, although they were clothed in
the peaceful overalls and smock of the farmer and also had submitted to
a haircut at the earnest instigation of Mrs. Corbett, who threatened to
cut off all bread-making unless her wishes were complied with!
Evelyn, who had never seen her brothers-in-law, looked upon them now in
wonder, and she could see their appearance was somewhat of a surprise
to Fred, who had not seen them for many years, and who remembered them
only as the heroes of his childhood days.
They greeted Fred hilariously, but to his wife they spoke timidly, for,
brave as they were in facing Spanish pirates, they were timid to the
point of flight in the presence of women.
As they drove home in the high-boxed wagon, the twins endeavored to
keep up the breezy enthusiasm that had characterized their letters.
They raved about the freedom of the West; they went into fresh raptures
over the view, and almost deranged their respiratory organs in their
praises of the air. They breathed in deep breaths of the ambient
atmosphere, chewed it up with loud smacks of enjoyment, and then blew
it out, snorting like whales. Evelyn, who was not without a sense of
humor, would have enjoyed it all, and laughed _at_ them, even if she
could not laugh with them, if she could have forgotten that they were
her husband's brothers, but it is very hard to see the humorous in the
grotesque behavior of those to whom we are "bound by the ties of duty,"
if not affection.
A good supper at the Black Creek Stopping-House and the hearty
hospitality of Mrs. Corbett restored Evelyn's good spirits. She
noticed, too, that the twins tamed down perceptibly in Mrs. Corbett's
presence.
Mrs. Corbett insisted on Fred and his wife spending the night at the
Stopping-House.
"Don't go to your own house until morning," she said. "Things look a
lot different when the sun is shining, and out here, you see, Mrs.
Fred, we have to do without and forget so many things that we bank a
lot on the sun. You people who live in cities, you've got gas and big
lamps, and I guess it doesn't bother you much whether the sun rises or
doesn't rise, or what he does, you're independent; but with us it is
different. The sun is the best thing we've got, and we go by him
considerable. Providence knows how it is with us, and lets us have lots
of the sun, winter and summer."
Evelyn gladly consented to stay.
Mrs. Corbett, observing Evelyn's soft white hands, decided that she was
not accustomed to work, and the wonder of how it would all turn out was
heavy upon her kind Irish heart as she said goodbye to her next
morning.
A big basket of bread and other provisions was put into the wagon at
the last minute. "Maybe your stove won't be drawin' just right at the
first," said Maggie Corbett, apologetically. As she watched Evelyn's
hat of red roses fading in the distance she said softly to herself:
"Sure I do hope it's true that He tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,
tho' there's some that says that ain't in the Bible at all. But it
sounds nice and kind anyway, and yon poor lamb needs all the help He
can give her. Him and me, we'll have to do the best we can for her!"
Mrs. Corbett went over to see her new neighbor two or three days after.
In response to her knock on the rough lumber door, a thin little voice
called to her to enter, which she did.
On the bare floor stood an open trunk from which a fur-trimmed pale
pink opera cloak hung carelessly. Beside the trunk in an attitude of
homesickness huddled the young woman, hair dishevelled, eyes red. Her
dress of green silk, embroidered stockings and beaded slippers looked
out of place and at variance with her primitive surroundings.
When Mrs. Corbett entered the room she sprang up hastily and apologized
for the untidiness of her house. She chattered gaily to hide the
trouble in her face, and Mrs. Corbett wisely refrained from any
apparent notice of her tears, and helped her to unpack her trunks and
set the house to rights.
Mrs. Corbett showed her how to make a combined washstand and clothes
press out of two soap boxes, how to make a wardrobe out of the head of
the bed, and set the twin sailors at the construction of a cookhouse
where the stove could be put.
When Mrs. Corbett left that afternoon it was a brighter and more
liveable dwelling. Coming home along the bank of Black Creek, she was
troubled in mind and heart for her new neighbor.
"This is June," she said to herself, "and wild roses are crowdin' up to
her door, and the meadow larks are sittin' round all over blinkin' at
the sun, and she has her man with her, and she ain't tired with the
work, and her hands ain't cracked and sore, and she hasn't been there
long enough to dislike the twins the way she will when she knows them
better, and there's no mosquitoes, and she hasn't been left to stay
alone, and still she cries! God help us! What will she do in the long
drizzle in the fall, when the wheat's spoilin' in the shock maybe, and
the house is dark, and her man's away--what _will_ she do?"
Mrs. Brydon spent many happy hours that summer at the Stopping-House,
and soon Mrs. Corbett knew all the events of her past life; the
sympathetic understanding of the Irish woman made it easy for her to
tell many things. Her mother had died when she was ten years old, and
since then she had been her father's constant companion until she met
Fred Brydon.
She could not understand, and so bitterly resented, her father's
dislike of Fred, not knowing that his fond old heart was torn with
jealousy. She and her father were too much alike to ever arrive at an
understanding, for both were proud and quick-tempered and imperious,
and so each day the breach grew wider. Just a word, a caress, an
assurance from her that she loved him still, that the new love had not
driven out the old, would have set his heart at rest, but with the
cruel thoughtlessness of youth she could see only one side of the
affair, and that her own.
At last she ran away and was married to the young man, whom her father
had never allowed her to bring to see him, and the proud old man was
left alone in his dreary mansion, brooding over what he called the
heartlessness of his only child.
Mrs. Corbett, with her quick understanding, was sorry for both of them,
and at every opportunity endeavored to turn Evelyn's thoughts towards
home. Once, at her earnest appeal, after she had got the young woman
telling her about how kind her father had been to her when her mother
died, Evelyn consented to write him a letter, but when it was finished,
with a flash of her old imperious pride, she tore it across and flung
the pieces on the floor, then hastily gathered them up and put them in
the stove.
One half sheet of the letter did not share the fate of the remainder,
for Mrs. Corbett intercepted it and hastily hid it in her apron pocket.
She might need it, she thought.