Masters of the Wheat-Lands Part 20

If you can only feel sure that the person has the qualities you admire it is possible that he could acquire one or two."

Agatha drew back. "And I've changed ever so much since that photograph was taken!" she exclaimed with a catch in her voice.

Wyllard admitted it. "Yes," he said, "I recognized that; you were a little immature then. I know that now--but all the graciousness and sweetness in you has grown and ripened. What is more, you have grown just as I seemed to know you would. I saw that clearly the day we met beside the stepping-stones. I would have asked you to marry me in England, only Gregory stood in the way."

The color ebbed suddenly out of the girl's face as she remembered.

"Gregory," she declared in a strained voice, "stands in the way still. I didn't send him away altogether. I'm not sure I made that clear."

Wyllard stood very still for a moment or two.

"I wonder," he said, "if there's anything significant in the fact that you gave me that reason last. He failed you in some way?"

"I'm not sure that I haven't failed him; but I can't go into that."

Again Wyllard stood silent. Then he turned to her with a strong restraint in his face.

"Gregory is a friend of mine," he said, "there is, at least, one very good reason why I should remember it, but it seems that somehow he hadn't the wit to keep you. Well, I can only wait, but when the time seems ripe I shall ask you again. Until then you have my promise that I will not say another word that could distress you. Perhaps I had better take you back to Mrs. Hastings now."

Agatha turned away, and they walked back together silently.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SUMMONS

Mrs. Hastings was standing beside her wagon in the gathering dusk when Agatha and Wyllard joined her. After Wyllard had helped the two women into the vehicle she looked down at him severely as she gathered up the reins.

"By this time Allen will have had to put the kiddies to bed," she said.

"Christina, as you might have borne in mind, goes over to Branstock's every evening. Anyway, you'll drive across and see him about that team as soon as you can; come to supper."

"I'll try," promised Wyllard with a certain hesitation. Mrs. Hastings turned to Agatha as they drove away.

"Why did he look at you before he answered me?" she asked, and laughed, for there was just light enough left to show the color in the girl's cheek. "Well," she added, "I told Allen he was sure to be the first."

Agatha looked at her in evident bewilderment, but she nodded. "Yes," she said, "of course, I knew it would come. Everybody knows by now that you have fallen out with Gregory."

"But, as I told you, I haven't fallen out with him."

"You certainly haven't married him, and if you have said 'No' to Harry Wyllard because you would sooner take Gregory after all, you're a singularly unwise young woman. Anyway, you'll have to meet Harry when he comes to supper. Allen's fond of a talk with him; I can't have him kept away."

"I was a little afraid of that," replied Agatha slowly. "What makes the situation more difficult is that he told me he would ask me again."

Mrs. Hastings was thoughtful for a moment. "In that case he will in all probability do it; but I don't think you need feel diffident about meeting him, especially as you can't help it. He'll wait and say nothing until he considers it advisable."

She changed the subject, and talked about other matters until they reached the homestead.

As the weeks went by Agatha found that what Mrs. Hastings had told her was warranted. Wyllard drove over every now and then, but she was rea.s.sured by his att.i.tude. He greeted her with the quiet cordiality which had hitherto characterized him, and it went a long way towards allaying the embarra.s.sment of which she was conscious at first. By and by, however, she felt no embarra.s.sment at all, in spite of the disturbing possibility that he might at some future time once more adopt the role of lover.

In the meanwhile, she realized that despite the efforts she made to think of him tenderly she was drifting further apart from Gregory. She had two other offers of marriage before the wheat had shot up a hand's breadth above the rich black loam. This was a matter of regret to her, and, though Mrs. Hastings a.s.sured her that the "boys" would get over it, she was rather shocked to hear that one of them had shortly afterwards involved himself in difficulties by creating a disturbance in Winnipeg.

The wheat, however, was growing tall when, at Mrs. Hastings' request, Agatha drove over to Willow Range. Wyllard was out when they reached the homestead, and leaving Mrs. Hastings and his housekeeper together, the girl wandered out into the open air. She went through the birch bluff and towards the slough, which had almost dried up now, and it was with a curious stirring of confused feelings that she remembered what Wyllard had said to her there. Through all her thoughts ran a regret that she had not met him four years earlier.

Regrets, however, were useless, and in order to get rid of them she walked more briskly up a low rise of ground where the gra.s.s was already turning white again, over the crest of the hill, and down the side to another hollow. The prairie rolled in wide undulations as the sea does when the swell of a distant gale underruns a gla.s.sy calm. Agatha had grown fond of the prairie. Its clear skies and fresh breezes had brought the color to her cheeks and given her composure, though there were times when the knowledge that she was no nearer a decision in regard to Gregory weighed heavily upon her. She had seen very little of him and he had not been effusive then. She could not guess what his feelings might be, but it had been a relief to her when he had ridden away from the home of the Hastingses. For a while after she saw him he faded to an unsubstantial, shadowy figure in the back of her mind.

On this afternoon when Agatha tried to put out of her mind the disturbing reflections that came to her as she walked, the prairie stretched away before her, gleaming in the sunlight under a vast sweep of cloudless blue. She was half-way down the long slope when a clash and tinkle reached her, and she noticed that a cloud of dust hung about the hollow where there had been another slough, which evidently had dried up weeks before. As men and horses were moving amid the dust she supposed that they were cutting prairie hay, which grows longer in such places than it does upon the levels. She went on another half-mile, and then sat down, for she had walked farther than she had intended to go. She could now see the men more clearly, and, though it was fiercely hot, they were evidently working at high pressure. Their blue duck clothing and bare brown arms appeared among the white and ocher tinting of the gra.s.s that seemed charged with brightness, and the sounds of their activity came up to her. She could distinguish the clas.h.i.+ng tinkle of the mowers, the crackle of the harsh stems, and the rattle of wagon wheels.

A great mound of gleaming gra.s.s, overhanging two half-seen horses, moved out of the slough, and she watched it draw nearer until she made out Wyllard sitting in the front of it. She sat still until he pulled the team up close beside her and looked down with a smile.

"It's almost two miles to the homestead. If you could manage to climb up I could make you a comfortable place," he said.

Agatha held her hands up with one foot upon a spoke of the wheels as Wyllard leaned down, and next moment she was lifted upwards. She felt his supporting hand upon her waist. Then she found herself standing upon a narrow ledge, clutching at the hay while he tore out several big armfuls of it and flung it back upon the top of the load.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE NEXT MOMENT SHE WAS LIFTED UPWARDS" (Page 146)]

"Now," he announced, "I guess you'll find that a snug enough nest."

She sank into it with a sense of physical satisfaction. The gra.s.s was soft and warm; it was scented with the aromatic odors of wild peppermint, and it yielded like a downy cus.h.i.+on beneath her limbs.

Still, she was just a little uneasy in mind, for she fancied that she had seen a sudden sign of feeling in Wyllard's face when he had held her for a moment on the ledge of the wagon. She glanced at him and was rea.s.sured. He was looking straight before him with unwavering eyes, and his face was set and quiet. Neither of them spoke until the team moved on. Then he turned to her.

"You won't be jolted much," he a.s.sured her. "They've been at it since four o'clock this morning."

"That," replied Agatha, "must mean that you rose at three."

Wyllard smiled. "As a matter of fact, it was half-past two. There was no dew last night, and we started early. I've several extra teams this year, and there's a good deal of hay to cut. Of course, we have to get it in the sloughs or any damp place where it's long. We don't sow gra.s.s, and we have no meadows like those there are in England."

Agatha understood that he meant to talk about matters of no particular consequence, as he usually did. She had noticed a vein of poetic imagination in him, and his idea that she had been with him through the snow of the lonely ranges and the gloom of the great forests of the Pacific slope appealed to her. Since the day when he told her that he loved her he had spoken only of commonplace subjects. Sitting close beside him in the hay she decided to let him talk about his farm, while she listened half-absently.

"But you have a foreman who could see the teams turned out, haven't you?" she asked, going back to the subject of his early rising.

"I had, but he left me three or four days ago. It's a pity, since I've taken up rather more than I can handle this year."

"Then why didn't you keep him?"

"Martial was a little mulish, and I'm afraid I'm troubled with a shortness of temper now and then. We had a difference of opinion as to the best way to drive the mower into the slough, and he didn't seem to recognize that he should have deferred to me. Unfortunately, as the boys were standing by, I had to insist upon his getting out of the saddle."

He had turned a little further towards her, and Agatha noticed that there was a bruise upon one side of his face. After what he had just told her the sight of it jarred upon her, though she would not admit that there was any reason why it should. She could not deny that on the prairie a resort to physical force might be warranted by the lack of any other remedy, but it hurt her to think of him as descending to an open brawl with one of his men.

Then it occurred to her that the other man in all probability had suffered more, and this brought her a certain sense of satisfaction which she admitted was more or less barbarous. She had made it clear that Wyllard was nothing to her, but she could not help watching him as he lay back against the hay. His wide hat set off his bronzed face, which, though not exactly handsome, was pleasant and rea.s.suring. The dusty s.h.i.+rt and old blue trousers accentuated the long, clean lines of his figure, and she realized with a faint sense of anger that his mere physical perfection, his strength and suppleness, stirred her heart. She recognized a feeling to be judiciously checked. After all, in spite of her denial of it, she was endowed with power to love as women close to nature love, with an emotion all-encompa.s.sing and not subject to cold reasoning.

They talked of trifles of no great consequence, for both of them were conscious of the necessity for a certain reticence; and when they reached the homestead Agatha joined Mrs. Hastings, while Wyllard pitched the hay off the wagon. He came in to supper presently with about half of his men, and they all sat down together in the long, barely furnished room. Wyllard was unusually animated. He drew Mrs. Hastings into a bout of whimsical badinage, which was interrupted when a beat of hoofs rose from the prairie.

"Somebody's riding in; I wonder what he wants," remarked Wyllard. "I certainly don't expect anybody."

The drumming of hoofs rang more sharply through the open windows, for the sod was hard and dry. It stopped suddenly and Agatha saw Wyllard start as a man came into the room. He was a little, thick-set man with a seamed and tanned face. He was dressed in rather old blue serge, and he walked as if he were a seaman.