Masters of the Wheat-Lands Part 5

Winifred pursed up her lips. "I understood you met him at the Grange, and you were only there for a few weeks once a year," she replied.

"After all, that isn't a very great deal. It seems he fell in love with you, which is, perhaps, comprehensible. What I don't quite know the reason for is why you fell in love with him."

"Ah," responded Agatha, "you have never seen Gregory."

"I haven't," admitted Winifred sourly; "I have, however, seen his picture. One must admit that he's reasonably good-looking. In fact, I've seen quite an a.s.sortment of photographs, but it's, perhaps, significant that the last was taken some years ago."

Agatha smiled. "Can a photograph show the clean, sanguine temperament of a man, his impulsive generosity, and cheerful optimism?"

Miss Rawlinson rose, and critically surveyed the photograph on the mantel.

"I don't want to be discouraging, but after studying that one I'm compelled to admit that it can't. No doubt it's the artist's fault, but I'm willing to admit that a young girl would be rather apt to credit a man with a face like that with qualities he didn't possess." She sat down again with a thoughtful expression. "The fact is, you set him up on a pedestal and burned incense to him when you were not old enough to know any better, and when he came home for a few weeks four years ago you promised to marry him. Now it seems he's ready at last, and wants you to go out to the new country. Perhaps it doesn't affect the question, but if I'd promised to marry a man in Canada he'd certainly have to come for me. Isn't there a certain risk in the thing?"

"A risk?"

Winifred nodded. "Yes," she said, "rather a serious one. Four years is a long time, and the man may have changed. In a new country where life is so different, it must be a thing they're rather apt to do."

A faint, half-compa.s.sionate, half-tolerant smile crept into Agatha's eyes. The mere idea that the sunny-tempered, brilliant young man to whom she had given her heart could have changed or degenerated in any way seemed absurd to her. Winifred, however, went on again.

"There's another point," she said. "If he's still the same, which isn't likely, there has certainly been a change in you. You have learned to see things more clearly, and have acquired a different standard from the one you had then. One can't help growing, and as one grows one looks for more. One is no longer pleased with the same things; it's inevitable."

She broke off for a moment, and her voice became gentler.

"Well," she added, "I've done my duty in trying to point this out to you, and now there's only another thing to say: since you're clearly bent on going, I'm going with you."

Agatha looked astonished, but there was a suggestion of relief in her expression, for the two had been firm friends and had faced a good deal together.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "that gets over the one difficulty!"

Winifred made a little whimsical gesture.

"I'm not quite sure that it does. The difficulty will probably be when I arrive in Canada, but I'm a rather capable person, and I believe they don't pay ninepence a thousand words in Winnipeg. Besides, I could keep the books at a store or a hotel, and at the very worst Gregory could, perhaps, find a husband for me. Women, I hear, are held in some estimation in that country. Perhaps there's a man out there who would treat decently even a little, plain, vixenish-tempered person with a turned-up nose."

Crossing the room again she banged the cover down on the typewriter, and then turned to Agatha with a suggestion of haziness in her eyes.

"Anyway, I'm very tired of this country. It would be intolerable when you went away."

Agatha stretched out a hand and drew the girl down beside her. She no longer feared adverse fortune and loneliness, and she was filled with a gentle compa.s.sion, for she knew how hard a fight Winifred had made, and part at least of what she had borne.

"My dear," she said, "we will go together."

Then she opened the second letter, which she had forgotten while they talked.

"They want me to stay at the Grange for a few weeks," she announced, and smiled. "An hour ago I felt crushed and beaten--and now, though my voice has probably gone for good, I don't seem to mind. Isn't it curious that both these letters should have come to sweep my troubles away to-night?"

"No," answered Winifred, "it's distinctly natural--just what one would have expected. You wrote to the man in Canada soon after you'd seen the specialist, and his answer was bound to arrive in the next few days."

"But I certainly didn't write the folks at the Grange."

Winifred's eyes twinkled. "As it happens, I did, two days ago. I ventured to point out their duty to them, and they were rather nice about it in another letter."

With a little sigh of contentment Agatha stretched herself out in the low chair. "Well," she said, "it probably wouldn't have the least effect if I scolded you. I believe I'm horribly worn out, Winny, and it will be a relief unspeakable to get away. If I can arrange to give up those pupils I'll go to-morrow."

Winifred made no answer. Kneeling with one elbow resting on the arm of Agatha's chair, she gazed straight in front of her. Both of the girls were very weary of the long, grim struggle, and now a change was close at hand.

CHAPTER V

THE OLD COUNTRY

It was a still, clear evening of spring when Wyllard, unstrapping the rucksack from his shoulders, sat down beside a frothing stream in a dale of Northern England. On his arrival in London a week or two earlier he had found awaiting him a letter from Mrs. Hastings, who was then in Paris, in which she said that she could not at the moment say when she would go home again, but that she expected to advise him shortly.

After answering the letter Wyllard started North, and, obtaining Agatha's address from Miss Rawlinson, went on again to a certain little town, which, encircled by towering fells, stands beside a lake in the North Country. He had already recognized that his mission was rather a delicate one, and he decided that it would be advisable to wait until he heard from Mrs. Hastings before calling upon Miss Ismay. There remained the question, what to do with the next few days. A conversation with several pedestrian tourists whom he met at his hotel, and a glance at a map of the hill-tracks decided him. Remembering that he had on several occasions kept the trail in Canada for close on forty miles, he bought a Swiss pattern rucksack, and set out on foot through the fells.

Incidentally, he saw scenery that gave him a new conception of the Old Country. He astonished his new friends, the tourists, who volunteered to show him the way over what they considered a difficult pa.s.s. To their great astonishment the brown-faced stranger, who wore ordinary tight-fitting American attire and rather pointed American shoes, went up the mountainside apparently without an effort, and for the credit of the clubs to which they belonged it was inc.u.mbent on them to keep pace with him. They did not know that he had carried bags of flour and mining tools over very much higher pa.s.ses, close up to the limit of eternal snow, but they did know that he set them a difficult pace, and after two days' climbing they were relieved to part company with him.

A professional guide who overtook them recognized the capabilities of the man when he noticed the way in which he lifted his feet and how he set them down. This, the guide decided, was a man accustomed to walking among the heather, but he was wrong; for it was the trick the bushman learns when he plods through leagues of undergrowth and fallen branches, or the tall gra.s.s of the swamps; and it is a memorable experience to make a day's journey with such a man. For the first hour the thing seems easy, as the pace is never forced, but the speed never slackens; and as the hours go by the novice, who flounders and stumbles, grows horribly weary of trying to keep up with the steady, persistent swing.

Wyllard had traveled since morning along a ridge of fells when he sat down beside the water and contentedly filled his pipe. On the one hand, a wall of crags high above was growing black against the evening light, and the stream, clear as crystal, came boiling down among great boulders. But the young man had wandered through many a grander and more savage scene of rocky desolation, and it impressed him less than the green valley in front of him. He had never seen anything like that either on the Pacific slope or in Western Canada.

Early as it was in the season, the meadows between rock and water were green as emerald, and the hedge-rows, just flushed with verdure, were clipped and trimmed as if their owner loved them. There was not a dead tree in the larch copse which dipped to the stream, and all its feathery ta.s.sels were sprinkled with tiny flecks of crimson and wondrous green.

Great oaks dotted the meadows, each one perfect in symmetry. It seemed that the men who held this land cared for single trees. The sleek, tame cattle that rubbed their necks on the level hedge-top and gazed at him ruminatively were very different from the wild, long-horned creatures whose furious stampede he had now and then headed off, riding hard while the roar of hoofs rang through the dust-cloud that floated like a sea fog across the sun-scorched prairie. Here, in the quiet vale, all was peace and tranquillity.

Wyllard noticed the pale primroses that pushed their yellow flowers up among the withered leaves, and he took account of the faint blue sheen beneath the beech trunks not far away. There was a vein of artistic feeling in him, and the elusive beauty of these things curiously appealed to him. He had seen the riotous, sensuous blaze of flowers kissed by Pacific breezes, and the burnished gold of wheat that rolled in mile-long waves; but it seemed to him that the wild things of the English North were, after all, more wonderful. They harmonized with the country's deep peacefulness; their beauty was chaste, fairy-like and ethereal.

By and by a wood pigeon cooed softly somewhere in the shadows, and a brown thrush perched on a bare oak bough began to sing. The broken, repeated melody went curiously well with the rippling murmur of sliding water, and Wyllard, though he could not remember ever having done anything of that sort before, leaned back with a smile to listen. His life had been a strenuous one, pa.s.sed for the most part in the driving-seat of great plows that rent their ample furrows through virgin prairie, guiding the clinking binders through the wheat under a blazing sun, or driving the plunging dories through the clammy fog over short, slopping seas. Now, however, the tranquillity of the English valley stole in on him, and he began to understand how the love of that well-trimmed land clung to the men out West, who spoke of it tenderly as the "Old Country."

Then, for he was in an unusually susceptible mood, he took from his pocket a little deerhide case, artistically made by a Blackfoot Indian, and removed from it the faded photograph of an English girl. He had obtained the photograph from the lad who had died among the ranges of the Pacific slope, and it had been his companion in many a desolate camp and on many a weary journey. The face was delicately modeled, and there was a freshness in it which is seldom seen outside the Old Country; but what pleased him most was the serenity in the clear, innocent eyes.

He was not in love with the picture--he would probably have smiled at the notion--but he had a curious feeling that he would meet the girl some day, and that it would then be a privilege merely to speak to her.

This was, after all, not so extravagant a fancy as it might appear, for romance, the mother of chivalry and many graces, still finds shelter in the hearts of men who dwell in the wide s.p.a.ces of the newer lands.

Shrewd and practical as these men are, they see visions now and then, and, what is more, with bleeding hands and toil incredible prove them to be realities.

By and by Wyllard put the photograph back into his pocket, and filled his pipe again. It was almost dark before he had smoked it out. The thrush had gone, and only the ripple of the water broke the silence, until he heard footsteps on the stones behind him. Looking around, he saw a young woman moving towards the river. He watched her with a quiet interest, for his perceptions were sharper than usual, and it seemed to him that she was very much in harmony with what he thought of as the key-tone of the place. She was tall and shapely, and she moved with grace. When, poised upon a shelf of rock as if considering the easiest way to the water, she stopped for a moment, her figure fell into reposeful lines, but that was after all only what he had expected, for he had half-consciously studied the Englishwomen whom he had met in the West.

The Western women usually moved, and certainly spoke, with an almost superfluous vivacity and alertness. There was in them a feverish activity, which contrasted with the English deliberation, which had sometimes exasperated him. Now he felt that this slowness of movement was born of the tranquillity of the well-trimmed land, and he realized that it would have troubled his sense of fitness if this girl had clattered down across the stones hurriedly and noisily.

At first he could not see her face, but when she went on a little further it became evident that she desired to cross the river, and was regarding the row of stepping stones somewhat dubiously. One or two had fallen over, or had been washed away by a flood, for there were several wide gaps between them, through which the stream frothed whitely. As soon as Wyllard noticed her hesitation, he rose and moved towards her.

"You want to get across?" he asked.

She was still glancing at the water, and although he was sure that she had not seen him or heard his approach, she turned towards him quietly.

Then a momentary sense of astonishment held him in an embarra.s.sed scrutiny, for it was her picture at which he had gazed scarcely half an hour before, and he would have recognized the face anywhere.

"Yes," she answered. "It is rather a long way around by the bridge, but some of the stones seem to have disappeared since I last came this way."