The Land of Promise Part 42

"The outsiders don't know. You mustn't blame them, how could they? It's only those who've lived on the prairie who _could_ know that the chief burden of the hards.h.i.+ps of opening up a new country falls upon the women. But the men who are the husbands, they know, and in their hearts they give us all credit."

"I guess they do, Mrs. Sharp," said Marsh earnestly.

Mrs. Sharp smiled gratefully on Nora through her tears.

"Thank you for speaking so kindly to me, my dear. I know that you are right in every blessed thing you've said. You must excuse me for being a bit downhearted for the moment. The fact is, I'm that nervous that I hardly know _what_ I'm saying. But you've done me no end of good."

"That's right." Nora got slowly to her feet. "Sid and Frank will be here in a minute or two, I am sure."

"And you're perfectly right, both of you," Mrs. Sharp repeated. "I couldn't go back and live in England again. If we lose our crop, well, we must hang on some way till next year. We shan't starve, exactly. A person's got to take the rough with the smooth; and take it by and large, it's a good country."

"Ah, now you're talking more like yourself, the self that used to cheer me up when----"

Turning, she saw her husband standing in the doorway.

"Frank!"

He was looking at her with quite a new expression. How long had he been there? Had he heard all she had been saying to Mrs. Sharp, carried away by the emotion aroused by the secret conflict within her own heart? She both hoped and feared that he had.

"Where's Sid?" said Mrs. Sharp, starting to her feet.

"Why, he's up at your place. Hulloa, Ed. Saw you coming along in the rig earlier in the morning. But I was surprised to find Reg here. Didn't recognize him so far away in his store clothes."

"Must have been a pleasant surprise for you," said Hornby with conviction.

"What's happened? Tell me what's happened."

"Mrs. Sharp came on here because she was too anxious to stay at home,"

Nora explained.

"Oh, you're all right."

"We are?" Mrs. Sharp gave a sobbing gasp of relief.

"Only a few acres got to go. That won't hurt you."

"Thank G.o.d for that! And it's goin' to be the best crop we ever had.

It's the finest country in the world!" Her face was beaming.

"You'd better be getting back," warned Taylor. "Sid's taken the inspector up to give him some dinner."

"He hasn't!" said Mrs. Sharp indignantly. "If that isn't just like a man." She made a gesture condemning the s.e.x. "It's a mercy there's plenty in the house. But I must be getting along right away," she bustled.

"But you mustn't think of walking all that way back in the hot sun,"

expostulated Nora. "There's Eddie's rig. Reggie, here, will drive you over."

"Oh, thank you, kindly. I'm not used to walking very much, you know, and I'd be all tuckered out by the time I got back home. Good-by, all. Good afternoon, Mrs. Taylor."

"Good afternoon. Reggie, you won't mind driving Mrs. Sharp back. It's only just a little over a mile."

"Not a bit of it," said Hornby good-naturedly.

"I'll come and help you put the mare in," said Marsh, starting to follow Hornby and Mrs. Sharp down the path.

"I guess it's a relief to you, now you know," he called back to his brother-in-law.

"Terrible. I want to have a talk with you presently, Ed. I'll go on out with him, I guess," he said, turning to his wife.

She nodded silently. She was grateful to him for leaving her alone for a time. They would have much to say to each other a little later.

"Hold on, Ed, I'm coming."

"Right you are!"

He ran lightly down the path where his brother-in-law stood waiting for him.

She stood for a long moment looking down at the innocent-looking little blossoms on her table. And they could cause such heartbreak and desolation, ranking, as engines of destruction, with the frost and the hail! Could make such seasoned and tried women as Mrs. Sharp weep and bring the gray look of apprehension into the eyes of a man like her husband. Those innocent-looking little flowers!

What must he have felt as he saw her arranging them so light-heartedly in her pudding-dish that morning. And yet, rather than mar her pleasure, he had choked back the impulse to speak. Yes, that was like him. For a moment they blurred as she looked at them. She checked her inclination to throw them into the stove, to burn them to ashes so that they could work their evil spells no more. Later on, she would do so. But she wanted them there until he returned.

She looked about the little room. Yes, it _was_ pretty and homelike, deserving all the nice things people said about it. And what a real pleasure she had had in transforming it, from the dreadful little place it was when she first saw it, into what it was now. Not that she could ever have worked the miracle alone.

She smiled sadly to herself. How all her thoughts, like homing pigeons, had the one goal!

And how proud he was of it all. With what delighted, almost childlike interest, he had watched each little change. And how he had acquiesced in every suggestion and helped her to plan and carry out the things she could not have done alone.

She lived again those long winter evenings when, snug and warm, the grim cruelty of the storms shut out, she had read aloud to him while he worked on making the chairs.

How long would it keep its prettiness with no woman's eye to keep its jealous watch on it? The process of reversion to its old desolation would be gradual. The curtains, the bright ribands, the cus.h.i.+ons would slowly become soiled and faded. And there would be no one here to renew them. For a moment, the thought of asking Mrs. Sharp to look after them came into her mind. But, no. She certainly had enough to do. And, besides--the thought thrilled her with delight--_he_ would not like having anyone else to touch them!

And she? She would be back in that old life where such simple little things were a commonplace, a matter of course. And what interest would they be to her? She could see herself ripping the ribands from an old hat to tie back curtains for Mrs. Hubbard! Certainly that excellent lady would be astonished if she suggested doing anything of the sort, and small wonder. She hired the proper people to keep her house in order just as she was going to hire her.

She found it in her heart to be sorry for Mrs. Hubbard. She had always had her money. The joy of these little miracles of contrivance had never been hers. She had bought her home. She had never, in all her pampered life, made one.

Home! What a desolating word it could be to the homeless. She knew.

Since her far-off childhood, she had never called a place 'home' till now. And just as the word began to take on a new meaning, she was going to leave it! Had anyone told her a few short months ago, on the night that she had first seen what she had inwardly called a hovel, that she would ever leave it with any faintest feeling of regret, she would have called him mad. Regret! why the thought of leaving tore her very heartstrings.

What if it had been only a few short months that had pa.s.sed since then?

One's life is not measured by the ticking of a clock, but by emotion and feeling. She had crowded more emotion into these few short months than in all the rest of her dull, uneventful life put together.

Fear, terror, hatred, murderous rage, bitter humiliation, she had felt them all within the small compa.s.s of these four walls. And greatest of all--why try to deceive her own heart any longer--here she had known love. She had fought off the acknowledgment of this the crowning experience and humiliation as long as she could. She had called on her pride, that pride which had never before failed her. And now, to herself, she had to acknowledge that she was beaten.

They were all against her. Her own brother had spoken, only a few moments ago, of her marriage as horrible. "A girl like you and a hired man!" She could hear him now. And _he_ had spoken of her leaving as a matter of course. He couldn't have done it if he had cared. He liked the comforts that a woman brings to a house, the little touches that no man's hand can give, that a woman, even as unskillful as she, brings about instinctively, that was all. Almost any other woman could do as well. He did not prize her for herself.

And she would go back to England and, as Hornby had gleefully said, no one need ever know. She would have a place, on sufferance, in other people's homes. The only change that the year would have made in her life would be that the check in her pocket, safely invested, might save her eventually, when she was too old to serve as a companion, from being dependant on actual charity. And to all outward intents and purposes, the year would be as if it had never been.

"In six months, all you've gone through here will seem nothing but a hideous dream," her brother had promised her. Was there ever a man since the world began that understood a woman! A dream! The only time in her life that she had really lived. No, all the rest of her life might be of the stuff that dreams are made on, but not this. And like a sleep-walker, dead to all sensation, she must go through with it.

And she was not yet thirty. All of her father's family--and she was physically the daughter of her father, not of her mother--lived to such a great age. In all human probability there would be at least fifty years of life left to her. Fifty years with all that made life worth living behind one!