The Land of Promise Part 34

CHAPTER XIV

The storm which the night had foreshadowed broke with violence before dawn. At times during the night, the wind had howled about the little building in a way which recalled to Nora one of the best-remembered holidays of her childhood. She and her mother had gone to Eastborne for a fortnight with some money Eddie had sent them shortly after his arrival in Canada. The autumnal equinox had caught them during the last days of their stay, and the strong impression which the wind had made upon her childish mind had remained with her ever since.

Lying, wakeful through the long hours, staring wide-eyed out of the little curtainless window into the thick darkness, thick enough to seem palpable; the memory of how, on that far-off day she had pa.s.sed long hours with her nose flattened against the window of the dingy little lodging-house drawing-room watching the wonder of the wind-lashed sea, came back to her with extraordinary vividness.

The spectacle had filled her with a sort of terrified exultation. She had longed to go out and stand on the wind-buffeted pier and take her part in this saturnalia of the elements. She had something of the same feeling now; a longing to leave her bed and go out onto the windswept prairie.

Strangely enough, she had no sensation of fatigue or weariness either bodily or mentally. Her mind, indeed, seemed extraordinarily active.

Little petty details of her childhood and of her life with Miss Wickham, long forgotten, such as the day the gardener had cut his thumb, trooped through her mind in an endless procession. She had a strange feeling that she would never sleep again.

But just as the blackness without seemed turning into heavy grayness, lulled possibly by the wind which had moderated its violence and had now sunk to a moan not unpleasant, and by the rythmic breathing of the sleeping man at her side, she fell asleep.

For several hours she must have slept heavily, indeed. For when she awoke, it was to find the place at her side empty. Hurriedly dressing herself, she went out into the living-room. That was empty, too. But the lamp was lighted, the kettle was singing merrily on the stove and the fire was burning brightly. And outside was a whirling veil of snow which made it impossible to see beyond the length of one's arm.

Had she been marooned on an island in the ultimate ocean of the Antartic, she could not have felt more cut off from the world she knew.

Well, it was better so.

She wondered what had become of Frank. Surely on a day like this there could be nothing to do outside; and even if there were, nothing so imperative as to take him away before he had had his breakfast. She felt a little hurt at his leaving without a word.

Evidently, he expected to return soon, however. The table was laid for two. She felt her face crimson as she saw that there was but one cup left. One of them must drink from one of those horrible tin cans. She did not ask herself which one it would be.

Partly to occupy herself and to take her thoughts away from the recollection of the events of the evening before, and partly prompted by a desire to have everything in readiness against her husband's return, she busied herself with the preparations for breakfast.

There were some eggs and a filch of bacon which they had brought from Winnipeg. She would make some toast, too. Very likely he didn't care for it, they certainly never had it at Gertie's, but in _her house_---- She smiled to think how quickly, in her mind, she had taken possession.

She was just beginning to think that she had been foolish to start her cooking without knowing at all when he was going to return, when she heard a great stamping and sc.r.a.ping of feet outside, and in another moment Frank's snow-covered figure darkened the doorway.

"Getting on with the breakfast? That's fine!" he called.

"It's quite ready: wherever have you been? I wouldn't have imagined that anyone could find a thing to do outside on a day like this."

"Oh, there's always something to do. But I just ran up to the Sharps'

for a minute. I knew old mother Sharp wouldn't keep her promise about coming down to-day. She's all right, but she does hate to walk."

"Well, I'm sure I wouldn't blame anyone for choosing to stay indoors a day like this. But what did you want to see her in such a hurry for?"

"Oh, nothin' particular; I sort of thought maybe you wouldn't mind having a little milk with your tea on a gloomy morning like this," he said shamefacedly.

"That was awfully good of you; thank you very much," she said with real grat.i.tude, as she thought of him tramping those two miles in the blinding storm.

"Do you think we are in for a blizzard?" she asked when they were at the table. To her unspeakable relief, she found that the one cup was intended for her; he had waved her toward the one chair, apparently the place of honor, contenting himself with one of the stools.

"N-o-o," he said, "I don't think so. It's beginning to lighten up a little already. And besides, don't you remember that I foretold a mildish winter?"

"I was forgetting that I had married a prophet," she smiled.

But all through the day the snow continued to fall steadily, although the wind had died away and, at intervals, the sun shone palely. At nightfall, it was still snowing.

The day pa.s.sed quickly, as Nora found plenty to occupy herself with. By supper time she felt healthfully tired, with the added comfortable feeling that, for a novice, she had really accomplished a good deal.

The whole room certainly looked cleaner and the pots and pans, although not s.h.i.+ning, were as near to it as hot water and scrubbing could make them. Fortunately, she had a quant.i.ty of fresh white paper in her trunk which greatly improved the appearance of the shelves.

During the day Frank left the house for longer or shorter intervals on various pretexts which she felt must be largely imaginary, trumped up for the occasion. She was agreeably surprised to find that he was sufficiently tactful to divine that she wanted to be alone.

While he was in the house he smoked his pipe incessantly and read some magazines which she had unpacked with some of her books. But she never glanced suddenly in his direction without finding that he was watching her.

"I tell _you_, this is fine," he said heartily as he was lighting his after-supper pipe. "Mrs. Sharp won't hardly know the place when she comes over. She's never seen it except when I was housekeeper. She doesn't think I'm much good at it. Leastways, she's always tellin' Sid that if she dies, he must marry again right away as soon as he can find anyone to have him, for fear the house gets to looking like this."

"That doesn't look like a very strong indors.e.m.e.nt," Nora admitted.

The next day Nora woke to a world of such dazzling whiteness that she was blinded every time she attempted to look out on it.

"You want to be careful," her husband cautioned her; "getting snow-blinded isn't as much fun as you'd think. Even I get bad sometimes; and I'm used to it. Looks like one of them Christmas cards, don't it? Somebody sent Gertie one once and she showed it to us."

That afternoon, Mr. Sharp drove his wife down for the promised visit. As in his judgment the two women would want to be alone, he proposed to Frank to drive back home with him to give him the benefit of his opinion on some improvements he was contemplating.

"You're only wasting your time," Mrs. Sharp had remarked grimly. "There ain't going to be anything done to any of them barns before I get a lean-to on the house. You'd think even a man would know that a house that's all right for two gets a little small for seven," she added, scornfully, to Nora.

"Are there seven of you?"

"Me and Sid and five little ones. If that don't make seven, I've forgotten all the 'rithmetic I ever learned," said Mrs. Sharp briefly.

"And let me tell you, you who're just starting in, that having children out here on the prairie half the time with no proper care, and particularly in winter, when maybe you're snowed up and the doctor can't get to you, ain't my idea of a bank holiday."

"I shouldn't think it would be," said Nora, sincerely shocked, although she found it difficult to hide a smile at her visitor's comparison; bank holidays being among her most horrid recollections.

Mrs. Sharp, despite a rather emphatic manner which softened noticeably as her visit progressed, turned out to be a stout, red-faced woman of middle age who seemed to be troubled with a chronic form of asthma. She was as unmistakably English as her husband. But like him, she had lost much of her native accent, although occasionally one caught a faint trace of the c.o.c.kney. She had two rather keen brown eyes which, as she talked, took in the room to its smallest detail.

"Well, I declare, I think you've done wonders considering you've only had a day and not used to work like this," she said heartily. "When Sid told me that Frank was bringing home a wife I said to myself: 'Well, I don't envy her _her_ job; comin' to a shack that ain't been lived in for nigh unto six months and when it was, with only a man runnin' it.'"

"You don't seem to have a very high opinion of men's ability in the domestic line," said Nora with a smile.

"I can tell you just how high it is," said Mrs. Sharp with decision. "I would just as soon think of consultin' little Sid--an' he's goin' on three--about the housekeepin' as I would his father. It ain't a man's work. Why should he know anything about it?"

"Still," demurred Nora, "lots of men look after themselves somehow."

"Somehow's just the word; they never get beyond that. Of course I knew Frank would be sure to marry some day. And with his good looks it's a wonder he didn't do so long ago. Most girls is so crazy about a good-lookin' fellow that they never stop to think if he has anything else to him. Not that he hasn't lots of good traits, I don't mean that.

But," she added shrewdly, "you don't look like the silly sort that would be taken in by good looks alone."

"No," said Nora dryly, "I don't think I am."

After that, until the two men returned, they talked of household matters, and Nora found that her new neighbor had a store of useful and practical suggestions to make, and, what was even better, seemed glad to place all her experience at her disposal in the kindliest and most friendly manner possible, entirely free from any trace of that patronage which had so maddened her in her sister-in-law.

"Now mind you," called Mrs. Sharp, as she laboriously climbed up to the seat beside her husband as they were driving away, "if Frank, here, gets at all upish--and he's pretty certain to, all newly married men do--you come to me. I'll settle him, never fear."

Frank laughed a little over-loudly at this parting shot, and Nora noticed that for some time after their guests had gone, he seemed unusually silent.

As for the Sharps, they also maintained an unwonted silence--which for Mrs. Sharp, at least, was something unusual--until they had arrived at their own door.