Ranching for Sylvia Part 14

"That would be very wrong; but the need for continual effort and the strain of making ends meet, with the chance of being ruined by a frozen crop, have pa.s.sed. I believe he misses the excitement of it."

"Then I gather that he built up this great farm?"

"Yes; from a free quarter-section. He and my mother started in a two-roomed shack. They were both from Ontario, but she died several years ago." The girl paused. "Sometimes I think she must have had remarkable courage, I can remember her as always ready in an emergency, always tranquil."

George glanced at her as she stood, finely posed, looking out across the waste of gra.s.s with gravely steady eyes, and it occurred to him that she resembled her mother in the respects she had mentioned.

Nevertheless, he felt inclined to wonder how she had got her grace and refinement. Alan Grant was forceful and rather primitive.

"Have you spent much of your time here?" he asked.

"No," she answered. "My mother was once a school-teacher, and she must have had ambitious views for me. When the farm began to prosper, I was sent to Toronto. After that I went to Montreal, and finally to England."

"You must be fond of traveling."

"Oh," she said, with some reserve, "I had thought of taking up a profession."

"And you have abandoned the idea?"

She looked at him quietly, wondering whether she should answer.

"I had no alternative," she said. "I began to realize it after my mother's death. Then my father was badly hurt in an accident with a team, and I came back. He has n.o.body else to look after him, and he is getting on in life."

Her words conveyed no hint of the stern struggle between duty and inclination, but George guessed it. This girl, he thought, was one not to give up lightly the career she had chosen.

Then she changed the subject with a smile.

"I suspect that my father approves of you, perhaps because of what you are doing with the land. I think I may say that if you have any little difficulty, or are short of any implements that would be useful, you need only come across to us."

"Thank you," George responded quietly.

"Mr. West mentioned that you were on a farm in this country once before. Why did you give it up?"

"Somebody left me a little money."

"Then what brought you back?"

She was rather direct, but that is not unusual in the West, and George was mildly flattered by the interest she displayed.

"It's a little difficult to answer. For one thing, I was beginning to feel that I was taking life too easily in England, It's a habit that grows on one."

He had no desire to conceal the fact that he had come out on Sylvia's behalf--it never occurred to him to mention it. He was trying to a.n.a.lyze the feelings which had rendered the sacrifice he made in leaving home a little easier.

"I don't think the dread of acquiring that habit is common among your people," Flora said mischievously. "It doesn't sound like a very convincing reason."

"No," replied George, with a smile. "Still, it had some weight. You see, it isn't difficult to get lazy and slack, and I'd done nothing except a little fis.h.i.+ng and shooting for several years. I didn't want to sink into a mere lounger about country houses and clubs. It's pleasant, but too much of it is apt to unfit one for anything else."

"You believe it's safer, for example, to haul stovewood home through the Canadian frost or drive a plow under the scorching sun?"

"Yes; I think I feel something of the kind."

Flora somewhat astonished him by her scornful laugh.

"You're wise," she said. "We have had sportsmen here from your country, and I've a vivid memory of one or two. One could see by their coa.r.s.e faces that they ate and drank too much; and they seemed determined to avoid discomfort at any cost. I suppose they could shoot, but they could neither strip a gun nor carry it on a long day's march. The last party thought it needful to take a teamload of supplies when they went north after moose. It would have been a catastrophe if they had missed their dinner."

"Going without one's dinner has its inconveniences," said George.

"And thinking too much about it has its perils," she retorted.

George nodded. He thought he knew what she meant, and he agreed with it. He could recall companions who, living for pleasure, had by degrees lost all zest for the more or less wholesome amus.e.m.e.nts to which they had confined their efforts. Some had become mere club loungers and tattlers; one or two had sunk into gross indulgence. This had had its effect on him: he did not wish to grow red-faced, slothful, and fleshy, as they had done, nor to busy himself with trivialities until such capacities for useful work as he possessed had atrophied.

"Well," he said, "n.o.body could call this a good country for the pampered loafer."

Flora smiled, and pointed out across the prairie. In the foreground it was flecked with crimson flowers; farther back willow and poplar bluffs stretched in bluish smears across the sweep of gra.s.s that ran on beyond them toward the vivid glow of color on the skyline. It was almost beautiful in the soft evening light, but it conveyed most clearly a sense of vastness and solitude. The effect was somehow daunting. One thought of the Arctic winter and the savage storms that swept the wilds.

"I've heard it called hard," she said. "It undoubtedly needs hard men; there is nothing here that can be easily won. That's a fact that the people you're sending over ought to recognize."

"They soon discover it when they get out. When they've had a crop hailed or frozen, the thing becomes obvious."

"Did you lose one?"

"I did," George rejoined rather gloomily. "I've a suspicion that if we get much dry weather and the usual strong winds, I may lose another.

The wheat's getting badly cut by driving sand; that's a trouble we don't have to put up with in the old country."

"I'm sorry," said Flora; and he knew she meant it. "But you won't be beaten by one bad season?"

"No," George answered with quiet determination. "I must make a success of this venture, whatever it costs."

She was a little puzzled by his manner, for she did not think he was addicted to being needlessly emphatic; but she asked no questions, and soon afterward the others joined them and they went back to the house.

Early on the following morning, George started homeward with his cattle, and as they rode slowly through the barley-gra.s.s that fringed the trail, Edgar looked at him with a smile.

"You spent some time in Miss Grant's company," he remarked. "How did she strike you?"

"I like her. She's interesting--I think that's the right word for it.

Seems to understand things; talks to you like a man."

"Just so," Edgar rejoined, with a laugh. "She's a lady I've a high opinion of; in fact, I'm a little afraid of her. Though I'm nearly as old as she is, she makes me feel callow. It's a sensation that's new to me."

"And you're a man of experience, aren't you?"

"I suppose I was rather a favorite at home," Edgar owned with humorous modesty. "For all that, I don't feel myself quite up to Miss Grant's standard."

"I didn't notice any a.s.sumption of superiority on her part."

"Oh, no," said Edgar. "She doesn't require to a.s.sume it; the superiority's obvious; that's the trouble. One hesitates about offering her the small change of compliments that generally went well at home. If you try to say something smart, she looks at you as if she were amused, not at what you said, but at you. There's an embarra.s.sing difference between the things."

"The remedy's simple. Don't try to be smart."

"You would find that easy," Edgar retorted. "Now, in my opinion, Miss Grant is intellectual, which is more than anybody ever accused you of being, but I suspect you would make more progress with her than I could do. Extremes have a way of meeting, and perhaps it isn't really curious that your direct and simple views should now and then recommend you to a more complex person."