Masters of the Wheat-Lands Part 10

"One small part of it," a.s.sured Wyllard. "I want to say that when I first saw this house, and how you seemed fitted to it, my misgivings about Gregory's decision troubled me once more. Now,"--and he made an impressive gesture--"they have vanished altogether, and they'll never come back again."

He spoke as he felt. This girl, he knew, would feel the strain; but it seemed to him that she had strength enough to bear it cheerfully. In spite of her daintiness, she was one who, in time of stress, could be depended on. He often remembered afterwards how they had sat together in the luxuriously furnished room, she leaning back in her big, low chair, with the soft light on her delicately tinted face. By and by he looked at her.

"It's curious that I had your photograph ever so long, and never thought of showing it to Gregory," he observed.

Agatha smiled. "I suppose it is," she admitted. "After all, except that it might have been a relief to Major Radcliffe if he had met you sooner, the fact that you didn't show it to Gregory doesn't seem of any particular consequence."

Wyllard was not quite sure of this. He had thought about this girl often, and certainly had been conscious of a curious thrill of satisfaction when he had met her at the stepping-stones. That feeling had suddenly disappeared when he had learned that she was his comrade's promised wife. He had, however, during the last hour or two made up his mind to think no more of her.

"Well," he declared, "the next thing is to arrange for Mrs. Hastings to meet you in London, or, perhaps, at the Grange. Her husband is a Canadian, a man of education, who has quite a large homestead not far from Gregory's. Her relatives are people of station in Montreal, and I feel sure that you'll like her."

They decided that he was to ask Mrs. Hastings to stay a few days at the Grange, and then he looked at the girl somewhat diffidently.

"She suggests going in a fortnight," he said.

Agatha smiled at him. "Then," she said, "I must not keep her waiting."

She rose and they went back together to join their hostess.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TRAVELING COMPANION

A gray haze, thickened by the smoke of the city, drove out across the water when the _Scarrowmania_ lay in the Mersey, with her cable hove short, and the last of the flood-tide gurgling against her bows. A trumpeting blast of steam swept high aloft from beside her squat funnel, and the splash of the slowly turning paddles of the two steam tugs that lay alongside mingled with the din it made. A gangway from one of them to the _Scarrowmania's_ forward deck, and a stream of frowsy humanity that had just been released from overpacked emigrant boarding-houses poured up it. There were apparently representatives of all peoples and languages among that unkempt horde--Britons, Scandinavians, Teutons, Italians, Russians, Poles--and they moved on in forlorn apathy, like cattle driven to the slaughter. One wondered how they had raised their pa.s.sage money, and how many years' bitter self-denial it had cost them to provide for their transit to the land of promise.

At the head of the gangway stood the steamboat doctors, for the _Scarrowmania_ was taking out an unusual number of pa.s.sengers, and there were two of them. They were immaculate in blue uniform, and looked very clean and English by contrast with the ma.s.s of frowsy aliens. Beside them stood another official, presumably acting on behalf of the Dominion Government, though there were few restrictions imposed upon Canadian immigration then, nor, for that matter, did anybody trouble much about the comfort of the steerage pa.s.sengers. Each steamer carried as many as she could hold.

As the stream poured out of the gangway, the doctor glanced at each newcomer's face, and then seizing him by the wrist uncovered it. Then he looked at the official, who made a sign, and the man moved on. Since this took him two or three seconds, one could have fancied that he either possessed peculiar powers, or that the test was a somewhat inefficient one.

A group of first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, leaning on the thwarts.h.i.+p rails close by, looked on, with complacent satisfaction or half-contemptuous pity.

Among them stood Mrs. Hastings, Miss Winifred Rawlinson, and Agatha. It was noticed that Wyllard, with a pipe in his hand, sat on a hatch forward, near the head of the gangway. Agatha drew Mrs. Hastings'

attention to it.

"Whatever is Mr. Wyllard doing there?" she asked.

Mrs. Hastings, who was wrapped in furs, to protect her from the sting in the east wind, smiled at her.

"That," she answered, "is more than I can tell you; but Harry Wyllard seems to find an interest in what other folks would consider most unpromising things, and, what is more to the purpose, he is rather addicted to taking a hand in them. It is a habit that costs him something now and then."

Agatha asked nothing further. She was interested in Wyllard, but she was at the moment more interested in the faces of those who swarmed on board. She wondered what the emigrants had endured in the lands that had cast them out; and what they might still have to bear. It seemed to her that the murmur of their harsh voices went up in a great protest, an inarticulate cry of sorrow. While she looked on the doctor held back a long-haired man who, shuffling in broken boots, was following a haggard woman. The physician drew him aside, and after he had consulted with the other official, two seamen hustled the man towards a second gangway that led to the tug. The woman raised a wild, despairing cry. She blocked the pa.s.sage, and a quarter-master drove her, expostulating in an agony of terror, forward among the rest. n.o.body appeared concerned about this alien's tragedy, except one man, and Agatha was not surprised when Wyllard rose and quietly laid his hand upon the official's shoulder.

A parley appeared to follow, somebody gave an order, and when the alien was led back again the woman's cries subsided. Agatha looked at Mrs.

Hastings and once more a smile crept into the older woman's eyes.

"Yes," said Mrs. Hastings, "I guessed he would feel that he had to interfere. That is a man who can't see any one in trouble." She added, with a little whimsical sigh, "He had a bonanza harvest last fall, anyway."

They moved aft soon afterwards, and the _Scarrowmania_ was smoothly sliding seawards with the first of the ebb when Agatha met Wyllard. He glanced at the Lancas.h.i.+re sandhills, which were fading into a pale ocher gleam amid the haze over the starboard hand, and then at the long row of painted buoys that moved back to them.

"You're off at last! The sad gray weather is dropping fast astern," he said. "Out yonder, the skies are clear."

"Thank you," replied Agatha, "I'm to apply that as I like? As a matter of fact, however, our days weren't always gray. But what was the trouble when those steerage people came on board?"

Wyllard's manner, she noticed, was free alike from the complacent self-satisfaction which occasionally characterizes the philanthropist, and from any affectation of diffidence.

"Well," he answered, "there was something wrong with that woman's husband. Nothing infectious, I believe, but they didn't seem to consider him a desirable citizen. They make a warning example of somebody with a physical infirmity now and then. The man, they decided, must be put ash.o.r.e again. In the meanwhile, somebody else had hustled the woman forward, and it looked as if they would take her on without him. The tug was almost ready to cast off."

"How dreadful!" said Agatha. "But what did you do?"

"Merely promised to guarantee the cost of his pa.s.sage back if they would refer his case to the immigration people at the other end. It is scarcely likely that they'll make trouble. As a rule, they only throw out folks who are certain to become a charge on the community."

"But if he really had any infirmity, mightn't it lead to that?"

"No," Wyllard responded dryly. "I would engage to give him a fair start if it was necessary. You wouldn't have had that woman landed in Montreal, helpless and alone, while the man was sent back again to starve in Poland?"

He saw a curious gleam in Agatha's eyes, and added in a deprecating manner, "You see, I've now and then limped without a dollar into a British Columbian mining town."

The girl was touched with compa.s.sion, but there was another matter that must be mentioned, though she felt that the time was inopportune.

"Miss Rawlinson, who had only a second-cla.s.s ticket, insists upon being told how it is that she has been transferred to the saloon."

Wyllard's eyes twinkled, but she noticed that he was wholly free from embarra.s.sment, which was not quite the case with her.

"Well," he said, "that's a matter I must leave you to handle. Anyway, she can't go second-cla.s.s now. One or two of the steerage exchanged when they saw their quarters, for which I don't blame them, and they have filled up every room."

"You haven't answered the question."

Wyllard waved his hand. "Miss Rawlinson is your bridesmaid, and I'm Gregory's best man. It seems to me it's my business to do everything just as he would like it done."

He left her a moment later, and, though she did not know how she was to explain the matter to Miss Rawlinson, who was of an independent nature, it occurred to her that he, at least, had found a rather graceful way out of the difficulty. The more she saw of this Western farmer, the more she liked him.

It was after dinner when she next met him and the wind had changed. The _Scarrowmania_ was steaming head-on into a glorious northwest breeze.

The shrouds sang; chain-guy, and stanchion, and whatever caught the wind, set up a deep-toned throbbing; and ahead ranks of little, white-topped seas rolled out of the night. A half-moon, blurred now and then by wisps of flying cloud, hung low above them, and odd spouts of spray that gleamed in the silvery light leaped up about the dipping bows. Wyllard was leaning on the rail when Agatha stopped beside him.

She glanced towards the lighted windows of the smoking-room not far away.

"How is it you are not in there?" she asked, noticing that he held a cigar in his hand.

"I was," answered Wyllard. "It's rather full, and it seemed that they didn't want me. They're busy playing cards, and the stakes are rather high. In a general way, a steamboat's smoking-room is less of a men's lounge than a gambling club."

"And you object to cards?"

"Oh, no!" Wyllard replied with a smile. "They merely make me tired, and when I feel I want some excitement for my money I get it another way.

That one seems tame to me."

"What sort of excitement do you like?"