Kitabı oku: «The Impostor», sayfa 8
CHAPTER X – MAUD HARRINGTON’S PROMISE
Daylight had not broken across the prairie, when, floundering through a foot of dusty snow, Witham reached the Grange. He was aching from fatigue and cold, and the deerskin jacket stood out from his numbed body, stiff with frost, when, leaning heavily on a table, he awaited Colonel Barrington. The latter, on entering, stared at him and then flung open a cupboard and poured out a glass of wine.
“Drink that before you talk. You look half dead,” he said.
Witham shook his head. “Perhaps you had better hear me first.”
Barrington thrust the glass upon him. “I could make nothing of what you told me while you speak like that. Drink it, and then sit until you get used to the different temperature.”
Witham drained the glass and sank limply into a chair. As yet his face was colourless, though his chilled flesh tingled horribly as the blood once more crept into the surface tissues. Then he fixed his eyes upon his host as he told his story. Barrington stood very straight watching his visitor, but his face was drawn, for the resolution which supported him through the day was less noticeable in the early morning, and it was evident now at least that he was an old man carrying a heavy load of anxiety. Still, as the story proceeded, a little blood crept into his cheeks, while Witham guessed that he found it difficult to retain his grim immobility.
“I am to understand that an attempt to reach the Grange through the snow would have been perilous?” he said.
“Yes,” said Witham quietly.
The older man stood very still regarding him intently, until he said, “I don’t mind admitting that it was distinctly regrettable!”
Witham stopped him with a gesture. “It was at least unavoidable, sir. The team would not face the snow, and no one could have reached the Grange alive.”
“No doubt you did your best – and, as a connexion of the family, I am glad it was you. Still – and there are cases in which it is desirable to speak plainly – the affair, which you will, of course, dismiss from your recollection, is to be considered as closed now.”
Witham smiled, and a trace of irony he could not quite repress was just discernible in his voice. “I scarcely think that was necessary, sir. It is, of course, sufficient for me to have rendered a small service to the distinguished family which has given me an opportunity of proving my right to recognition, and neither you, nor Miss Barrington, need have any apprehension that I will presume upon it!”
Barrington wheeled round. “You have the Courthorne temper, at least, and perhaps I deserved this display of it. You acted with commendable discretion in coming straight to me – and the astonishment I got drove the other aspect of the question out of my head. If it hadn’t been for you, my niece would have frozen.”
“I’m afraid I spoke unguardedly, sir; but I am very tired. Still, if you will wait a few minutes, I will get the horses out without troubling the hired man.”
Barrington made a little gesture of comprehension, and then shook his head. “You are fit for nothing further, and need rest and sleep.”
“You will want somebody, sir,” said Witham. “The snow is very loose and deep.”
He went out, and Barrington, who looked after him with a curious expression in his face, nodded twice as if in approval. Twenty minutes later he took his place in the sleigh that slid away from the Grange, which lay a league behind it when the sunrise flamed across the prairie. The wind had gone, and there was only a pitiless brightness and a devastating cold, while the snow lay blown in wisps, dried dusty and fine as flour by the frost. It had no cohesion, the runners sank in it, and Witham was almost waist deep when he dragged the floundering team through the drifts. A day had passed since he had eaten anything worth mention, but he held on with an endurance which his companion, who was incapable of rendering him assistance, wondered at. There were belts of deep snow the almost buried sleigh must be dragged through, and tracts from which the wind had swept the dusty covering, leaving bare the grasses the runners would not slide over, where the team came to a standstill, and could scarcely be urged to continue the struggle.
At last, however, the loghouse rose, a lonely mound of whiteness, out of the prairie, and Witham drew in a deep breath of contentment when a dusky figure appeared for a moment in the doorway. His weariness seemed to fall from him, and once more his companion wondered at the tirelessness of the man, as, floundering on foot beside them, he urged the team through the powdery drifts beneath the big birch bluff. Witham did not go in, however, when they reached the house; and when, five minutes later, Maud Barrington came out, she saw him leaning with a drawn face against the sleigh. He straightened himself suddenly at the sight of her, but she had seen sufficient, and her heart softened towards him. Whatever the man’s history had been he had borne a good deal for her.
The return journey was even more arduous, and now and then Maud Barrington felt a curious throb of pity for the worn-out man, who during most of it walked beside the team; but it was accomplished at last, and she contrived to find means of thanking him alone when they reached the Grange.
Witham shook his head, and then smiled a little. “It isn’t nice to make a bargain,” he said. “Still, it is less pleasant now and then to feel under an obligation, though there is no reason why you should.”
Maud Barrington was not altogether pleased, but she could not blind herself to facts, and it was plain that there was an obligation. “I am afraid I cannot quite believe that, but I do not see what you are leading to.”
Witham’s eyes twinkled. “Well,” he said reflectively, “I don’t want you to fancy that last night commits you to any line of conduct in regard to me. I only asked for a truce, you see.”
Maud Barrington was a trifle nettled. “Yes?” she said.
“Then, I want to show you how you can discharge any trifling obligation you may fancy you may owe me, which of course would be more pleasant to you. Do not allow your uncle to sell any wheat forward for you, and persuade him to sow every acre that belongs to you this spring.”
“But however would this benefit you,” asked the girl.
Witham laughed. “I have a fancy that I can straighten up things at Silverdale, if I can get my way. It would please me, and I believe they want it. Of course, a desire to improve anything appears curious in me!”
Maud Barrington was relieved of the necessity of answering, for the Colonel came up just then; but, moved by some sudden impulse, she nodded as if in agreement.
It was afternoon when she awakened from a refreshing sleep, and descending to the room set apart for herself and her aunt, sat thoughtfully still awhile in a chair beside the stove. Then, stretching out her hand, she took up a little case of photographs and slipped out one of them. It was a portrait of a boy and pony, but there was a significance in the fact that she knew just where to find it. The picture was a good one, and once more Maud Barrington noticed the arrogance, which did not, however, seem out of place there, in the lad’s face. It was also a comely face, but there was a hint of sensuality in it that marred its beauty. Then with a growing perplexity she compared it with that of the weary man who had plodded beside the team. Witham was not arrogant but resolute, and there was no stamp of indulgence in his face. Indeed, the girl had from the beginning recognized the virility in it that was tinged with asceticism and sprang from a simple, strenuous life of toil in the wind and sun.
Just then there was a rustle of fabric, and she laid down the photograph a moment too late, as her aunt came in. As it happened, the elder lady’s eyes rested on the picture, and a faint flush of annoyance crept into the face of the girl. It was scarcely perceptible, but Miss Barrington saw it, and though she felt tempted, did not smile.
“I did not know you were down,” she said. “Lance is still asleep. He seemed very tired.”
“Yes,” said the girl. “That is very probable. He left the railroad before daylight, and had driven round to several farms before he came to Macdonald’s, and he was very considerate. He had made me take all the furs, and, I fancy, walked up and down with nothing but his indoor clothing on all night long, though the wind went through the building, and one could scarcely keep alive a few feet from the stove.”
Again the flicker of colour crept into the girl’s cheeks, and the eyes that were keen, as well as gentle, noticed it.
“I think you owe him a good deal,” said Miss Barrington.
“Yes,” said her niece, with a little laugh which appeared to imply a trace of resentment. “I believe I do, but he seemed unusually anxious to relieve me of that impression. He was also good enough to hint that nothing he might have done need prevent me being – the right word is a trifle difficult to find – but I fancy he meant unpleasant to him if I wished it.”
There was a little twinkle in Miss Barrington’s eyes. “Are you not a trifle hard to please, my dear? Now, if he had attempted to insist on a claim to your gratitude, you would have resented it.”
“Of course,” said the girl reflectively. “Still, it is annoying to be debarred from offering it. There are times, aunt, when I can’t help wishing that Lance Courthorne had never come to Silverdale. There are men who leave nothing just as they found it, and whom one can’t ignore.”
Miss Barrington shook her head. “I fancy you are wrong. He has offended after all?”
She was pleased to see her niece’s face relax into a smile that expressed unconcern. “We are all exacting now and then,” said the girl. “Still, he made me promise to give him a fair trial, which was not flattering, because it suggested that I had been unnecessarily harsh, and then hinted this morning that he had no intention of holding me to it. It really was not gratifying to find he held the concession he asked for of so small account. You are, however, as easily swayed by trifles as I am, because Lance can do no wrong since he kissed your hand.”
“I really think I liked him the better for it,” said the little silver-haired lady. “The respect was not assumed, but wholly genuine, you see; and whether I was entitled to it or not, it was a good deal in Lance’s favour that he should offer it to me. There must be some good in the man who can be moved to reverence anything, even if he is mistaken.”
“No man with any sense could help adoring you,” said Maud Barrington. “Still, I wonder why you believe I was wrong in wishing he had not come to Silverdale.”
Miss Barrington looked thoughtful. “I will tell you, my dear. There are few better men than my brother; but his thoughts, and the traditions he is bound by, are those of fifty years ago, while the restless life of the prairie is a thing of to-day. We have fallen too far behind it at Silverdale, and a crisis is coming that none of us are prepared for. Even Dane is scarcely fitted to help my brother to face it, and the rest are either over-fond of their pleasure or untrained boys. Brave lads they are, but none of them have been taught that it is only by mental strain, or the ceaseless toil of his body, the man without an inheritance can win himself a competence now. This is why they want a leader who has known hardship and hunger, instead of ease, and won what he holds with his own hand in place of having it given him.”
“You fancy we could find one in such a man as Lance has been?”
Miss Barrington looked grave. “I believe the prodigal was afterwards a better, as well as a wiser, man than the one who stayed at home, and I am not quite sure that Lance’s history is so nearly like that of the son in the parable as we have believed it to be. A residence in the sty is apt to leave a stain, which I have not, though I have looked for it, found on him.”
The eyes of the two women met, and, though nothing more was said, each realized that the other was perplexed by the same question, while the girl was astonished to find her vague suspicions shared. While they sat silent, Colonel Barrington came in.
“I am glad to see you looking so much better, Maud,” he said, with a trace of embarrassment. “Courthorne is resting still. Now, I can’t help feeling that we have been a trifle more distant than was needful with him. The man has really behaved very discreetly. I mean in everything.”
This was a great admission, and Miss Barrington smiled. “Did it hurt you very much to tell us that?” she asked.
The Colonel laughed. “I know what you mean, and if you put me on my mettle I’ll retract. After all, it was no great credit to him, because blood will tell, and he is, of course, a Courthorne.”
Almost without her intention, Maud Barrington’s eyes wandered towards the photograph, and then looking up she met those of her aunt, and once more saw the thought that troubled her in them.
“The Courthorne blood is responsible for a good deal more than discretion,” said Miss Barrington, who went out quietly.
Her brother appeared a trifle perplexed. “Now, I fancied your aunt had taken him under her wing, and when I was about to suggest that, considering the connexion between the families, we might ask him over to dinner occasionally, she goes away,” he said.
The girl looked down a moment, for, realizing that her uncle recognized the obligation he was under to the man he did not like, she remembered that she herself owed him considerably more and he had asked for something in return. It was not altogether easy to grant, but she had tacitly pledged herself, and turning suddenly she laid a hand on Barrington’s arm.
“Of course; but I want to talk of something else just now,” she said. “You know I have very seldom asked you questions about my affairs, but I wish to take a little practical interest in them this year.”
“Yes?” said Barrington, with a smile. “Well, I am at your service, my dear, and quite ready to account for my stewardship. You are no longer my ward, except by your own wishes.”
“I am still your niece,” said the girl, patting his arm. “Now, there is, of course, nobody who could manage the farming better than you do, but I would like to raise a large crop of wheat this season.”
“It wouldn’t pay,” and the Colonel grew suddenly grave. “Very few men in the district are going to sow all their holding. Wheat is steadily going down.”
“Then if nobody sows there will be very little, and shouldn’t that put up the prices?”
Barrington’s eyes twinkled. “Who has been teaching you commercial economy? You are too pretty to understand such things, and the argument is fallacious, because the wheat is consumed in Europe – and even if we have not much to offer, they can get plenty from California, Chile, India, and Australia.”
“Oh, yes – and Russia,” said the girl. “Still, you see, the big mills in Winnipeg and Minneapolis depend upon the prairie. They couldn’t very well bring wheat in from Australia.”
Barrington was still smiling with his eyes, but his lips were set. “A little knowledge is dangerous, my dear, and if you could understand me better, I could show you where you were wrong. As it is, I can only tell you that I have decided to sell wheat forward and plough very little.”
“But that was a policy you condemned with your usual vigour. You really know you did.”
“My dear,” said the Colonel, with a little impatient gesture, “one can never argue with a lady. You see – circumstances alter cases considerably.”
He nodded with an air of wisdom as though that decided it; but the girl persisted. “Uncle,” she said, drawing closer to him with lithe gracefulness, “I want you to let me have my own way just for once, and if I am wrong I will never do anything you do not approve of again. After all, it is a very little thing, and you would like to please me.”
“It is a trifle that is likely to cost you a good deal of money,” said the Colonel dryly.
“I think I could afford it, and you could not refuse me.”
“As I am only your uncle, and no longer a trustee, I could not,” said Barrington. “Still, you would not act against my wishes?”
His eyes were gentle, unusually so, for he was not as a rule very patient when any one questioned his will; but there was a reproach in them that hurt the girl. Still, because she had promised, she persisted.
“No,” she said. “That is why it would be ever so much nicer if you would just think as I did.”
Barrington looked at her steadily. “If you insist, I can at least hope for the best,” he said, with a gravity that brought a faint colour to the listener’s cheek.
It was next day when Witham took his leave, and Maud Barrington stood beside him as he put on his driving furs.
“You told me there was something you wished me to do, and, though it was difficult, it is done,” she said. “My holding will be sown with wheat this spring.”
Witham turned his head aside a moment and apparently found it needful to fumble at the fastenings of the furs, while there was a curious expression in his eyes when he looked round again.
“Then,” he said with a little smile, “we are quits. That cancels any little obligation which may have existed.”
He had gone in another minute, and Maud Barrington turned back into the stove-warmed room very quietly. Her lips were, however, somewhat closely set.
CHAPTER XI – SPEED THE PLOUGH
Winter had fled back beyond the barrens to the lonely North at last, and though here and there a little slushy snow still lay soaking the black loam in a hollow, a warm wind swept the vast levels when one morning Colonel Barrington rode with his niece and sister across the prairie. Spring comes suddenly in that region, and the frost-bleached sod was steaming under an effulgent sun, while in places a hardy flower peeped through. It was six hundred miles to the forests of the Rockies’ eastern slope, and as far to the Athabascan pines, but it seemed to Maud Barrington that their resinous sweetness was in the glorious western wind, which awoke a musical sighing from the sea of rippling grass. It rolled away before her in billows of lustrous silver-grey, and had for sole boundary the first upward spring of the arch of cloudless blue, across which the vanguard of the feathered host pressed on, company by company towards the Pole.
The freshness of it all stirred her blood like wine, and the brightness that flooded the prairie had crept into her eyes; for those who bear the iron winter of that lonely land realize the wonder of the reawakening, which in a little space of day, dresses the waste which has lain for long months white and silent as the dead, in living green. It also has its subtle significance that the grimmest toiler feels, and the essence of it is hope eternal and triumphant life. The girl felt the thrill of it, and gave thanks by an answering brightness, as the murmuring grasses and peeping flowerets did; but there was behind her instinctive gladness a vague wonder and expectancy. She had read widely, and seen the life of the cities with understanding eyes, and now she was to be provided with the edifying spectacle of the gambler and outcast turned farmer.
Had she been asked a few months earlier whether the man who had, as Courthorne had done, cast away his honour and wallowed in the mire, could come forth again and purge himself from the stain, her answer would have been coldly sceptical; but now, with the old familiar miracle and what it symbolized before her eyes, the thing looked less improbable. Why this should give pleasure she did not know, or would not admit that she did, but the fact remained that it was so.
Trotting down the slope of the next rise, they came upon him, and he stood with very little sign of dissolute living upon him by a great breaker plough. In front of him, the quarter-mile furrow led on beyond the tall sighting poles on the crest of the next rise, and four splendid horses, of a kind not very usual on the prairie, were stamping the steaming clods at his side. Bronzed by frost and sun, with his brick-red neck and arch of chest revealed by the coarse blue shirt that, belted at the waist, enhanced his slenderness of flank, the repentant prodigal was at least a passable specimen of the animal man, but it was the strength and patience in his face that struck the girl, as he turned towards her, bareheaded, with a little smile in his eyes. She also noticed the difference he presented with his ingrained hands and the stain of the soil upon him to her uncle, who sat his horse, immaculate as usual with gloved hand on the bridle, for the Englishmen at Silverdale usually hired other men to do their coarser work for them.
“So you are commencing in earnest in face of my opinion?” said Barrington. “Of course, I wish you success, but that consummation appears distinctly doubtful.”
Witham laughed as he pointed to a great machine which, hauled by four horses, rolled towards them, scattering the black clods in its wake. “I’m doing what I can to achieve it, sir,” he said. “In fact, I’m staking somewhat heavily. That team with the gang ploughs and cultivators cost me more dollars than I care to remember.”
“No doubt,” said Barrington dryly. “Still, we have always considered oxen good enough for breaking prairie at Silverdale.”
Witham nodded. “I used to do so, sir, when I could get nothing better, but after driving oxen for eight years one finds out their disadvantages.”
Barrington’s face grew a trifle stern. “There are times when you tax our patience, Lance,” he said. “Still, there is nothing to be gained by questioning your assertion. What I fail to see is where your reward for all this will come from, because I am still convinced that the soil will, so to speak, give you back eighty cents for every dollar you put into it. I would, however, like to look at those implements. I have never seen better ones.”
He dismounted and helped his companion down, for Witham made no answer. The farmer was never sure what actuated him, but, save in an occasional fit of irony, he had not attempted by any reference to make his past fall into line with Courthorne’s since he had first been accepted as the latter at Silverdale. He had taken the dead man’s inheritance, for a while, but he would stoop no further, and to speak the truth, which he saw was not credited, brought him a grim amusement as well as flung a sop to his pride. Presently, however, Miss Barrington turned to him, and there was a kindly gleam in her eyes as she glanced at the splendid horses and widening strip of ploughing.
“You have the hope of youth, Lance, to make this venture when all looks black – and it pleases me,” she said. “Sometimes I fancy that men had braver hearts than they have now when I was young.”
Witham flushed a trifle, and stretching out an arm swept his hand round the horizon. “All that looked dead a very little while ago, and now you can see the creeping greenness in the sod,” he said. “The lean years cannot last for ever, and, even if one is beaten again, there is a consolation in knowing that one has made a struggle. Now, I am quite aware that you are fancying a speech of this kind does not come well from me.”
Maud Barrington had seen his gesture, and something in the thought that impelled it, as well as the almost statuesque pose of his thinly-clad figure, appealed to her. Courthorne as farmer, with the damp of clean effort on his forehead and the stain of the good soil that would faithfully repay it on his garments, had very little in common with the profligate and gambler. Vaguely she wondered whether he was not working out his own redemption by every wheat furrow torn from the virgin prairie, and then again the doubt crept in. Could this man have ever found pleasure in the mire?
“You will plough all your holding, Lance?” asked the elder lady, who had not answered his last speech yet, but meant to do.
“Yes,” said the man. “All I can. It’s a big venture, and if it fails will cripple me; but I seem to feel, apart from any reason I can discern, that wheat is going up again, and I must go through with this ploughing. Of course, it does not sound very sensible.”
Miss Barrington looked at him gravely, for there was a curious and steadily-tightening bond between the two. “It depends upon what you mean by sense. Can we reason out all we feel, and is there nothing intangible but real behind the impulses which may be sent to us?”
“Well,” said Witham, with a little smile, “that is a trifle too deep for me, and it’s difficult to think of anything but the work I have to do. But you were the first at Silverdale to hold out a hand to me – and I have a feeling that your good wishes would go a long way now. Is it altogether fantastic to believe that the good-will of my first friend would help to bring me prosperity?”
The white-haired lady’s eyes grew momentarily soft, and, with a gravity that did not seem out of place, she moved forward and laid her hand on a big horse’s neck, and smiled when the dumb beast responded to her gentle touch.
“It is a good work,” she said. “Lance, there is more than dollars, or the bread that somebody is needing, behind what you are doing, and because I loved your mother I know how her approval would have followed you. And now sow in hope, and God speed your plough!”
She turned away almost abruptly, and Witham stood still, with one hand closed tightly and a little deeper tint in the bronze of his face, sensible at once of an unchanged resolution and a horrible degradation. Then he saw that the Colonel had helped Miss Barrington into the saddle and her niece was speaking.
“I have something to ask Mr. Courthorne, and will overtake you,” she said.
The others rode on, and the girl turned to Witham, “I made you a promise and did my best to keep it but I find it harder than I fancied it would be,” she said. “I want you to release me.”
“I should like to hear your reasons,” said Witham.
The girl made a faint gesture of impatience. “Of course, if you insist!”
“I do,” said Witham quietly.
“Then I promised you to have all my holding sown this year, and I am still willing to do so; but, though my uncle makes no protests I know he feels my opposition very keenly, and it hurts me horribly. Unspoken reproaches are the worst to bear, you know, and now Dane and some of the others are following your lead, it is painful to feel that I am taking part with them against the man who has always been kind to me.”
“And you would prefer to be loyal to Colonel Barrington even if it cost you a good deal?”
“Of course!” said Maud Barrington. “Can you ask me?”
Witham saw the sparkle in her eyes and the half-contemptuous pride in the poise of the shapely head. Loyalty, it was evident, was not a figure of speech with her, but he felt that he had seen enough and turned his face aside.
“I knew it would be difficult when I asked,” he said. “Still, I cannot give you back that promise. We are going to see a great change this year, and I have set my heart on making all I can for you.”
“But why should you?” asked Maud Barrington, somewhat astonished that she did not feel more angry.
“Well,” said Witham gravely, “I may tell you by and by, and in the meanwhile you can set it down to vanity. This may be my last venture at Silverdale, and I want to make it a big success.”
The girl glanced at him sharply, and it was because the news caused her an unreasonable concern that there was a trace of irony in her voice.
“Your last venture! Have we been unkind to you or does it imply that, as you once insinuated, an exemplary life becomes monotonous?”
Witham laughed. “No. I should like to stay here – a very long while,” he said; and the girl saw he spoke the truth as she watched him glance wistfully at the splendid teams, great ploughs, and rich, black soil. “In fact, strange as it may appear, it will be virtue, given the rein for once, that drives me out when I go away.”
“But where are you going to?”
Witham glanced vaguely across the prairie, and the girl was puzzled by the look in his eyes. “Back to my own station,” he said softly, as though to himself, and then turned with a little shrug of his shoulders. “In the meanwhile there is a good deal to do, and once more I am sorry I cannot release you.”
“Then, there is an end of it. You could not expect me to beg you to, so we will discuss the practical difficulty. I cannot under the circumstances borrow my uncle’s teams, and I am told I have not sufficient men or horses to put a large crop in.”
“Of course!” said Witham quietly. “Well, I have now the best teams and machines on this part of the prairie, and am bringing Ontario men in. I will do the ploughing – and, if it will make it easier for you, you can pay me for the services.”
There was a little flush on the girl’s face. “It is all distasteful, but as you will not give me back my word, I will keep it to the letter. Still, it almost makes me reluctant to ask you a further favour.”
“This one is promised before you ask it,” said Witham quietly.
It cost Maud Barrington some trouble to make her wishes clear, and Witham’s smile was not wholly one of pleasure as he listened. One of the young English lads, who was, it appeared, a distant connexion of the girl’s, had been losing large sums of money at a gaming table, and seeking other equally undesirable relaxations at the railroad settlement. For the sake of his mother in England, Miss Barrington desired him brought to his senses, but was afraid to appeal to the Colonel, whose measures were occasionally more draconic than wise.
“I will do what I can,” said Witham. “Still, I am not sure that a lad of the kind is worth your worrying over, and I am a trifle curious as to what induced you to entrust the mission to me?”
The girl felt embarrassed, but she saw that an answer was expected. “Since you ask, it occurred to me that you could do it better than anybody else,” she said. “Please don’t misunderstand me; but I fancy it is the other man who is leading him away.”
Witham smiled somewhat grimly. “Your meaning is quite plain, and I am already looking forward to the encounter with my fellow-gambler. You believe that I will prove a match for him?”
