Harding of Allenwood Part 35

"All right. I will get you a name that you can take. I shall have to go to Allenwood."

Davies had been watching him keenly.

"Very well," he said. "Sign this, and look in again when you have got your friend's signature."

Three days later Gerald was back in the broker's office.

"Can you negotiate it now?" he asked nervously, producing the paper.

"Yes," said Davies. "The name's good enough. I know Harding."

After deducting a high rate of interest, he gave Gerald the money, and then locked the note away with a look of great satisfaction.

Harding's name was forged, and Davies knew it.

CHAPTER XX

A SEVERE TEST

Winter ended suddenly, as it generally does on the plains, and rain and suns.h.i.+ne melted the snow from the withered gra.s.s. Then the northwest wind awoke, and rioting across the wide levels dried the spongy sod, while goose and crane and duck, beating their northward way, sailed down on tired wings to rest a while among the sloos. For a week or two, when no team could have hauled a load over the boggy trails, Harding was busy mending harness and getting ready his implements. The machines were numerous and expensive, but he had been forced to put off their adjustment because it is risky to handle cold iron in the Canadian frost. He had been unusually silent and preoccupied of late; but Hester, knowing his habits, asked no questions. When he was ready, Craig would tell her what was in his mind, and in the meantime she had matters of her own to think about. All the work that could be done went forward with regular precision, and, in spite of Harding's reserve, there was mutual confidence between the two. Hester was quietly happy, but she was conscious of some regret.

In a few more months she must leave her brother's house and transfer to another the care and thought she had given him. She knew he would miss her, and now and then she wondered anxiously whether any other woman could understand and help him as she had done. Craig had faults and he needed indulging.

Then, too, he sometimes gave people a wrong impression. She had heard him called hard. Although in reality generous and often compa.s.sionate, his clear understanding of practical things made him impatient of incompetence and stupidity. He needed a wider outlook and more toleration for people who could not see what was luminously plain to him. Life was not such a simple matter with clean-cut rules and duties as Craig supposed. Grasping its main issues firmly, he did not perceive that they merged into one another through a fine gradation of varying tones and shades.

Rather late one night Hester sat sewing while Harding was busy at his writing table, his pipe, which had gone out, lying upon the papers. He had left the homestead before it was light that morning to set his steam-plow to work, though n.o.body at Allenwood had taken a team from the stable yet. Devine had told her of the trouble they had encountered: how the soft soil clogged the moldboards, and the wheels sank, and the coulters crashed against patches of unthawed ground. This, however, had not stopped Harding. There was work to be done and he must get about it in the best way he could. At supper time he came home in very greasy overalls, looking tired, but as soon as the meal was finished he took out some papers, and now, at last, he laid down his pen and sat with knitted brows and clenched hand.

"Come back, Craig!" Hester called softly.

He started, threw the papers into a drawer, and looked at his watch.

"I thought I'd give them half an hour, and I've been all evening," he said, feeling for his pipe. "Now we'll have a talk. I told Fred to order all the dressed lumber he wanted, and I'd meet the bill. The house he thought of putting up wasn't half big enough; in a year or two he'd have had to build again. Then we want the stuff to season, and there's no time to lose if it's to be ready for you when the harvest's in."

Hester blushed prettily.

"You have given us a good deal already, Craig. We would have been satisfied with the smaller homestead."

"Shucks!" returned Harding. "I don't give what I can't afford. You and Fred have helped to put me where I am, and I'd have felt mean if I hadn't given you a good start off when I'm going to spend money recklessly on another plan. Now that all I need for the summer's paid for, I've been doing some figuring."

"Ah! You think of buying some of the Allenwood land?"

"Yes," he said gravely. "It will be a strain, but now's the time, when the falling markets will scare off buyers. I hate to see things go to pieces, and they want a man to show them how the settlement should be run. They have to choose between me and the mortgage broker. It will cost me a tough fight to beat him, but I think I see my way."

"But what about Colonel Mowbray?"

"He's the trouble. I surely don't know what to do with him; but I guess he'll have to be satisfied with moral authority. I might leave him that."

Hester felt sorry for the Colonel. He was autocratic and arbitrary, his ways were obsolete, and he had no place in a land that was beginning to throb with modern activity. She saw the pathetic side of his position; and, after all, the man was of a finer type than the feverish money makers. His ideals were high, though his way of realizing them was out of date.

"Craig," she said, "it may be better for Allenwood that you should take control, but you're running a big risk, and somehow your plan looks rather pitiless. You're not really hard----"

She paused and Harding smiled.

"I'm as I was made, and to watch Allenwood going to ruin is more than I can stand for. It would be worse to let the moneylender sell it out to small farmers under a new mortgage and grind them down until they and the land were starved. Broadwood and one or two more will help me all they can, but they haven't the money or the grip to run the place alone."

"And you feel that you can do it. Well, perhaps you can, but it sounds rash. You are very sure of yourself, Craig."

"How can I explain?" he said with a half amused, half puzzled air. "The feeling's not vanity. I have a conviction that this is my job, and now that I begin to see my way, I have to put it through. I'm not swaggering about my abilities--there are smarter men in many ways at Allenwood; my strong point is this: I can see how things are going, and feel the drift of forces I didn't set in motion and can't control. All I do is to fall into line and let them carry me forward, instead of standing against the stream. The world demands a higher standard of economical efficiency; in using the best tools and the latest methods I'm obeying the call."

"What was it that first fixed your thoughts on Allenwood?" she asked.

"Beatrice Mowbray. I'm going to marry her if I make good."

"You have no doubts about that either?"

"Oh, yes; I have plenty. I know what I'm up against; but human nature's strongest in the end. She likes me as a man."

Hester understood him. She was to marry a man of her own station, which would save her many perplexities, but Craig, respecting no standard but personal merit, would have married above or beneath him with equal boldness. It was not because he was ambitious, but because he loved her that he had chosen Beatrice Mowbray. Yet Hester was anxious on his account.

"It's a big risk," she said. "The girl is dainty and fastidious. There's nothing coa.r.s.e in you, but you have no outward polish. Perhaps the tastes you have inherited may make things easier."

"Well, sometimes I have a curious feeling about these Allenwood people.

I seem to understand them; I find myself talking as they do. There was something Kenwyne said the other night about an English custom, and I seemed to know all about it, though I'd never heard of the thing before."

He got up and knocked out his pipe.

"All that doesn't matter," he said whimsically. "What's important now is that it's late, and I must have steam up on the plow by daybreak."

For the next week Harding was very busy; and then, coming back to the house one afternoon for some engine-packing, he found Beatrice alone in their plain living-room. She noticed the quick gleam of pleasure in his eyes and was conscious of a response to it, but she was very calm as she explained that Hester had gone to saddle a horse on which she meant to ride with her to Mrs. Broadwood's.

"That should give us ten minutes," Harding said. "There's something I once promised to show you and I may not have a better chance."

Unlocking a drawer, he took out a small rosewood box, finely inlaid.

"This was my father's. Hester has never seen it. I found it among his things."

"It is beautiful."

Harding opened the box and handed her a photograph.

"That is my mother," he said.

Beatrice studied it with interest. The face was of peasant type, with irregular features and a worn look. Beatrice thought the woman could not have been beautiful and must have led a laborious life, but she was struck by the strength and patience the face expressed.

Harding next took out a small Prayer-book in a finely tooled binding of faded leather and gave it to her open. The first leaf bore a date and a line of writing in delicate slanted letters: _To Basil, from his mother._