Neighbours Part 18

"The world seems to have died," said Jean after a long period of thoughtfulness.

The expression was an appropriate one. The world was, actually, dead.

Every blade of gra.s.s was a stark little corpse, swaying ghostily to the stir of the cold air. Soon the shroud of Winter would be woven about them, flake by flake, mantling them all in its cold, white tomb.

"But in the spring it will live again," Jean continued, after a pause.

"That is the life eternal."

Jean was a strange girl. Her thoughts went on and on, reaching out, and out. She seemed to live always on the verge of the infinite. . . .

At length we were at Brown's. The rickety shack, smaller than either of ours, presented a sad and forlorn appearance. Three little faces were crowded in the single window that covered our approach. Brown himself was busy building a stable of sods, and succeeding very badly in his work. He could scarcely be distinguished from his building material, but when he saw us he shook himself, as a dog shakes off water, and came up, touching his cap.

"We are your neighbours from Fourteen," we announced ourselves. "May we go in?"

"You may, and welcome," he said. "The wife will be a bit fuddled. I'm not the most presentable, myself."

Then Jean did a great thing; one of those wonderful things that no one but Jean seemed to think of. She clambered to the side of the wagon and held out her arms.

"I'm all dirt, Miss," Brown protested. "I'm all earth and sand." But he came slowly forward to her outstretched arms, and when his hands reached hers he took her and gently helped her down.

"Thank you, Mr. Brown," she said.

But Brown was looking at her and at us with eyes that had suddenly gone misty with a mist not of the sods or of the sand. Two little pools of water gathered and streaked a slow, dusty course across his grimy face.

Inside we found Mrs. Brown 'a bit fuddled,' as her husband had predicted. At first she merely stood wringing her hands, but when Jean and Marjorie kissed her, and then kissed the little Browns, the veil suddenly lifted and she was all kindness and hospitality. What a day it was, after we began to get acquainted! Marjorie and Jean had brought some home-made candy, and in a few minutes the little Browns were smeared and happy and slipping gently about looking into the faces of our girls as though they verily believed them angels.

After awhile Marjorie and Jean managed to explain that it was quite the thing in Canada, when visiting a neighbour, to carry your eatables with you, and produced a well packed basket out of our wagon. We had to saw up a board which Mr. Brown was using in his building operations in order to make an extension of the table so that all might sit down together.

And when we had done that Mrs. Brown surprised us all by covering it with a cloth of the finest Irish linen, and producing from somewhere a setting of hand-painted china, aided and abetted by a tea service of real silver. And after supper Brown showed us his fire-arms. He had a perfect a.r.s.enal of them, when he was in much greater need of a cow. And Mrs. Brown, I know, was showing the girls wonderful things out of boxes.

And when it was all dark and starry we hitched the oxen to the wagon, and shook hands all round, and kissed the children all round, and the girls kissed Mrs. Brown, and Mr. Brown forgot himself and kissed the girls, and Jack and I almost kissed Mrs. Brown, and we drew slowly away, waving our hands and watching the five figures framed in the doorway against the yellow light of the oil lamp on the opposite wall.

And we knew that in some way we had brought the hedges and lanes and rose-gardens of England down to that crude shanty on section Four and had woven them about another little sentry-box on the most skyward trenches of civilization. . . . And the next day Jack and I drove over again and showed Brown how to build a sod stable.

Our experience with the Browns encouraged us to cultivate the acquaintance of our other neighbours, and as the short, bright days of November wore by the low-hanging sun often saw our ox-wagon wending slowly across the prairies, and the North Star and the Great Dipper were the silent witnesses of its return to Fourteen. Sometimes, too, the great magician of the North would light his mimic candles, and we would creak homeward in the weird light of their flickering battalions minueting on the stage of the universe. Smith, the Scotsman, and Burke, the American, received us with undivided hospitality and that strange sense of common interest which is the most priceless thing about pioneer life; one of the rich qualities of human nature which seems inevitably to dry up in the more complex civilisations. Ole Hansen entertained us for a full hour in the stable before his buxom Olga consented to admit us into the house. When at last we were granted that privilege there were evidence of hurried scrubbing of floors and faces.

"My wife bane all the time yust on the yump," Ole explained apologetically. "Some time Ay tank by d.a.m.n we have too many kids, eh?"

It appeared that Ole was beginning to harbor some modern ideas about the size of families. His opinion that six was "yust a nice commence" was being shaken. The housing problem was coming home to him and bearing its inevitable fruit.

No such radicalism had yet filtered into the mind of the Russian, who, for the sake of convenience, we continued to call Sneezit. He met us stolidly where the trail wound down the bank of the gully near to his dug-out. He wore a long sheepskin coat, with the wool still on it, high boots drawn well up on the thigh, and a brushy black beard. He regarded us in silence, and at length Jack spoke.

"We are your neighbours. We have come to call on you. We hope you are well."

The lips under the black mustache parted slowly, showing a set of strong, regular, teeth.

"No much Angleesh," he remarked.

We clambered down and shook hands. This seemed to a.s.sure him of our friendly intentions, and when we managed to make it clear that we wanted to visit his house he led us to it without hesitation.

It was merely a cave dug out of the side of the gully. The front was roughly built up with stones and sods, and a crude door, made of pieces of packing boxes, afforded admittance. The only light was from an opening in the door, which could be closed when the weather was too severe.

Sneezit went first and addressed some words in Russian into the gloom.

We followed, encountering in the door the fumes of the place's bad ventilation. It was some time before our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, but presently we discerned a woman stooping, indicating a long bench which had been set for us. Across the cave was a drove of children, their eyes peering and s.h.i.+ning like those of wild animals.

Indeed, it seemed that eyes were the most noticeable thing in that very humble little home. Presumably there were mouths as well; no doubt Sneezit and his wife had reason to know that there were mouths as well as eyes.

The Russian talked "no much Angleesh," and his wife none, so our conversation was somewhat restrained. Presently, however, we became aware that the woman was performing some operation on a little rusty stove which sat near the front of the cave, so that its crooked stove-pipe might find exit through the roof. After a little she brought out some tin cups and served tea. Sneezit, wiser than our friend Brown, had provided himself with a cow, and the strong tea, well diluted with milk, made a very good drink indeed. She served also a kind of dark, flat bread which bore more witness to her hospitality than to her skill in domestic science. There were no other dainties.

When we had eaten and drunk we prepared to go, but not until Jean and Marjorie had distributed some of their home-made candy among the children. We had hoped during this process to take a census but the sudden commotion which it created made our statistics unreliable.

Marjorie said there were eight; Jean, ten; Jack made no estimate. I was disposed to agree with Jean's figures.

After we came out of the cave our host, apparently wis.h.i.+ng to give evidence of his friends.h.i.+p, led us to a shed which he had built close to the edge of the little stream that meandered along the bottom of the gully. He had covered it with a stack of prairie hay, so that it was quite warm. Inside were a yoke of oxen, a cow, two pigs, and a number of hens and ducks. The pride of the Russian's face as he showed them was something to behold and afterwards go away, humbled and thinking.

Sneezit was on the road to independence! The drab curtain of oppression which had hung about the Sneezits since the beginning of their race he had torn in two, and through the rent his grizzled face beheld a world of hope and promise, a world in which he was as good as his neighbour!

As soon after our return from harvesting as our duties permitted it we paid another visit to Mrs. Alton. Sandy saw us afar off and swept down upon us like a tornado. Apparently he had known us at the first glimpse, or the first sniff, whichever was his source of information, for there was no question this time about our welcome. His barking and tail-wagging accompanied us all the remainder of the way to the little box that Mrs. Alton called home.

The widow had had time to dress since we hove in view--that is one of the advantages of prairie life not set out in the immigration booklets--and it was a dainty and spick-and-span Mrs. Alton that greeted us when our wagon lumbered up to her door.

"I said, 'It's our friends from Fourteen and Twenty-two'--you see how I am picking up your prairie way of numbering your farms instead of naming them--I said, 'It's our friends from Fourteen and Twenty-two' as soon as I heard Sandy's first bark. That was before you were in sight, so far as my poor eyes could see. But Jerry, who was up in the wagon playing teamster cried, 'I see dem, Mudder; oxes and Mith Lane.' He's crazy about Miss Lane."

"Jerry is a young man of discrimination," I said, scoring for once. But my wit was lost in the wild and panting hug which Jean was bestowing upon my rival.

"So he's Jerry now," said Jean, releasing her embrace enough for speech.

"That sounds like getting down to earth. Ever so much more chummy than Gerald."

"Do you think so?" Mrs. Alton queried. "And I had vowed that, _whatever_ came, I never would call him Jerry. Too reminiscent of Jeremiah, and lamentations, and all that sort of thing that I wanted to get away from." Mrs. Alton stopped short, as though she had said more than she intended, then brightly took up the thread again. "I vowed I would leave my lamentations behind," she continued. "I take it that this is a country where there is room for everything but regrets."

It was evident that Mrs. Alton's bereavement was filling a good part of her mind, so Jean deftly switched the conversation back to the boy, and presently was conducting a foot-race to the chicken shed with herself, Jerry, and Sandy as the compet.i.tors. Sandy won.

We had tea, of course, and after Jerry had gone to bed and Sandy had lain down with his chops on the floor between his paws and his tail thumping the boards occasionally in approbation Jack got out our much worn deck of cards and we initiated Mrs. Alton into the mysteries of pedro. With a beginner's luck she and Jack were much too successful for Jean and me, and when it was time for us to go we insisted that she must visit Fourteen some night soon and give us a chance to return the drubbing.

"I should _so_ like to, but I can't leave Jerry," Mrs. Alton explained.

"But Jerry must come, too," we countered. "Jerry and Sandy, and, if necessary, the cow and the chickens. Now you simply must, or some night we will come over and kidnap you by force." But Mrs. Alton would give us no definite answer.

There was no such hesitation at Jake's. Jake met us in the yard, hatless, coatless, vestless, although the temperature was flirting with the freezing point.

"Welcome, Sittin' Crow!" he exclaimed. "And all the other little crows.

I suppose you've come to condole with me in my affliction?"

"What affliction?" we inquired, half misled by Jake's manner, for he was an expert in simulation.

"She's inside--an' in possession. It's fort'nate fer me this country runs so much to outside, fer that's all I've any claim on."

But by this time Jake's wife appeared in the door. "Come on in, girls,"

she cried, "and never mind that blatherskite. He goes around half dressed, keeping himself warm thinking up nonsense. I tell him some day he'll freeze his hair, and that's his finish, for I won't stay married to a bald man, whatever happens."

"Tut, tut," returned her spouse. "Where Bella Donna is put, she stays.

That's her strong point."

It was an afternoon of much badinage we spent at Jake's, but under the surface there were evidences that our former land guide regarded his wife with a sort of awe which he tried to obscure from public view by a smoke screen of raillery. Bella, it was apparent, was a woman of character, and although Jake could scarcely be described as plastic in her hands, his recasting was only the harder on him on that account. He was in the mills of the G.o.ds, and they proposed to make a job of it.