The Impostor

“Yes?” said Barrington, with a smile. “Well, I am at your service, my dear, and quite ready to account for my stewardship. You are no longer my ward, except by your own wishes.”

“I am still your niece,” said the girl, patting his arm. “Now, there is, of course, nobody who could manage the farming better than you do, but I would like to raise a large crop of wheat this season.”

“It wouldn’t pay,” and the Colonel grew suddenly grave. “Very few men in the district are going to sow all their holding. Wheat is steadily going down.”

“Then if nobody sows there will be very little, and shouldn’t that put up the prices?”

Barrington’s eyes twinkled. “Who has been teaching you commercial economy? You are too pretty to understand such things, and the argument is fallacious, because the wheat is consumed in Europe – and even if we have not much to offer, they can get plenty from California, Chile, India, and Australia.”

“Oh, yes – and Russia,” said the girl. “Still, you see, the big mills in Winnipeg and Minneapolis depend upon the prairie. They couldn’t very well bring wheat in from Australia.”

Barrington was still smiling with his eyes, but his lips were set. “A little knowledge is dangerous, my dear, and if you could understand me better, I could show you where you were wrong. As it is, I can only tell you that I have decided to sell wheat forward and plough very little.”

“But that was a policy you condemned with your usual vigour. You really know you did.”

“My dear,” said the Colonel, with a little impatient gesture, “one can never argue with a lady. You see – circumstances alter cases considerably.”

He nodded with an air of wisdom as though that decided it; but the girl persisted. “Uncle,” she said, drawing closer to him with lithe gracefulness, “I want you to let me have my own way just for once, and if I am wrong I will never do anything you do not approve of again. After all, it is a very little thing, and you would like to please me.”

“It is a trifle that is likely to cost you a good deal of money,” said the Colonel dryly.

“I think I could afford it, and you could not refuse me.”

“As I am only your uncle, and no longer a trustee, I could not,” said Barrington. “Still, you would not act against my wishes?”

His eyes were gentle, unusually so, for he was not as a rule very patient when any one questioned his will; but there was a reproach in them that hurt the girl. Still, because she had promised, she persisted.

“No,” she said. “That is why it would be ever so much nicer if you would just think as I did.”

Barrington looked at her steadily. “If you insist, I can at least hope for the best,” he said, with a gravity that brought a faint colour to the listener’s cheek.

It was next day when Witham took his leave, and Maud Barrington stood beside him as he put on his driving furs.

“You told me there was something you wished me to do, and, though it was difficult, it is done,” she said. “My holding will be sown with wheat this spring.”

Witham turned his head aside a moment and apparently found it needful to fumble at the fastenings of the furs, while there was a curious expression in his eyes when he looked round again.

“Then,” he said with a little smile, “we are quits. That cancels any little obligation which may have existed.”

He had gone in another minute, and Maud Barrington turned back into the stove-warmed room very quietly. Her lips were, however, somewhat closely set.

CHAPTER XI – SPEED THE PLOUGH

Winter had fled back beyond the barrens to the lonely North at last, and though here and there a little slushy snow still lay soaking the black loam in a hollow, a warm wind swept the vast levels when one morning Colonel Barrington rode with his niece and sister across the prairie. Spring comes suddenly in that region, and the frost-bleached sod was steaming under an effulgent sun, while in places a hardy flower peeped through. It was six hundred miles to the forests of the Rockies’ eastern slope, and as far to the Athabascan pines, but it seemed to Maud Barrington that their resinous sweetness was in the glorious western wind, which awoke a musical sighing from the sea of rippling grass. It rolled away before her in billows of lustrous silver-grey, and had for sole boundary the first upward spring of the arch of cloudless blue, across which the vanguard of the feathered host pressed on, company by company towards the Pole.

The freshness of it all stirred her blood like wine, and the brightness that flooded the prairie had crept into her eyes; for those who bear the iron winter of that lonely land realize the wonder of the reawakening, which in a little space of day, dresses the waste which has lain for long months white and silent as the dead, in living green. It also has its subtle significance that the grimmest toiler feels, and the essence of it is hope eternal and triumphant life. The girl felt the thrill of it, and gave thanks by an answering brightness, as the murmuring grasses and peeping flowerets did; but there was behind her instinctive gladness a vague wonder and expectancy. She had read widely, and seen the life of the cities with understanding eyes, and now she was to be provided with the edifying spectacle of the gambler and outcast turned farmer.

Had she been asked a few months earlier whether the man who had, as Courthorne had done, cast away his honour and wallowed in the mire, could come forth again and purge himself from the stain, her answer would have been coldly sceptical; but now, with the old familiar miracle and what it symbolized before her eyes, the thing looked less improbable. Why this should give pleasure she did not know, or would not admit that she did, but the fact remained that it was so.

Trotting down the slope of the next rise, they came upon him, and he stood with very little sign of dissolute living upon him by a great breaker plough. In front of him, the quarter-mile furrow led on beyond the tall sighting poles on the crest of the next rise, and four splendid horses, of a kind not very usual on the prairie, were stamping the steaming clods at his side. Bronzed by frost and sun, with his brick-red neck and arch of chest revealed by the coarse blue shirt that, belted at the waist, enhanced his slenderness of flank, the repentant prodigal was at least a passable specimen of the animal man, but it was the strength and patience in his face that struck the girl, as he turned towards her, bareheaded, with a little smile in his eyes. She also noticed the difference he presented with his ingrained hands and the stain of the soil upon him to her uncle, who sat his horse, immaculate as usual with gloved hand on the bridle, for the Englishmen at Silverdale usually hired other men to do their coarser work for them.

“So you are commencing in earnest in face of my opinion?” said Barrington. “Of course, I wish you success, but that consummation appears distinctly doubtful.”

Witham laughed as he pointed to a great machine which, hauled by four horses, rolled towards them, scattering the black clods in its wake. “I’m doing what I can to achieve it, sir,” he said. “In fact, I’m staking somewhat heavily. That team with the gang ploughs and cultivators cost me more dollars than I care to remember.”

“No doubt,” said Barrington dryly. “Still, we have always considered oxen good enough for breaking prairie at Silverdale.”

Witham nodded. “I used to do so, sir, when I could get nothing better, but after driving oxen for eight years one finds out their disadvantages.”

Barrington’s face grew a trifle stern. “There are times when you tax our patience, Lance,” he said. “Still, there is nothing to be gained by questioning your assertion. What I fail to see is where your reward for all this will come from, because I am still convinced that the soil will, so to speak, give you back eighty cents for every dollar you put into it. I would, however, like to look at those implements. I have never seen better ones.”

He dismounted and helped his companion down, for Witham made no answer. The farmer was never sure what actuated him, but, save in an occasional fit of irony, he had not attempted by any reference to make his past fall into line with Courthorne’s since he had first been accepted as the latter at Silverdale. He had taken the dead man’s inheritance, for a while, but he would stoop no further, and to speak the truth, which he saw was not credited, brought him a grim amusement as well as flung a sop to his pride. Presently, however, Miss Barrington turned to him, and there was a kindly gleam in her eyes as she glanced at the splendid horses and widening strip of ploughing.

“You have the hope of youth, Lance, to make this venture when all looks black – and it pleases me,” she said. “Sometimes I fancy that men had braver hearts than they have now when I was young.”

Witham flushed a trifle, and stretching out an arm swept his hand round the horizon. “All that looked dead a very little while ago, and now you can see the creeping greenness in the sod,” he said. “The lean years cannot last for ever, and, even if one is beaten again, there is a consolation in knowing that one has made a struggle. Now, I am quite aware that you are fancying a speech of this kind does not come well from me.”

Maud Barrington had seen his gesture, and something in the thought that impelled it, as well as the almost statuesque pose of his thinly-clad figure, appealed to her. Courthorne as farmer, with the damp of clean effort on his forehead and the stain of the good soil that would faithfully repay it on his garments, had very little in common with the profligate and gambler. Vaguely she wondered whether he was not working out his own redemption by every wheat furrow torn from the virgin prairie, and then again the doubt crept in. Could this man have ever found pleasure in the mire?

“You will plough all your holding, Lance?” asked the elder lady, who had not answered his last speech yet, but meant to do.

“Yes,” said the man. “All I can. It’s a big venture, and if it fails will cripple me; but I seem to feel, apart from any reason I can discern, that wheat is going up again, and I must go through with this ploughing. Of course, it does not sound very sensible.”

Miss Barrington looked at him gravely, for there was a curious and steadily-tightening bond between the two. “It depends upon what you mean by sense. Can we reason out all we feel, and is there nothing intangible but real behind the impulses which may be sent to us?”

“Well,” said Witham, with a little smile, “that is a trifle too deep for me, and it’s difficult to think of anything but the work I have to do. But you were the first at Silverdale to hold out a hand to me – and I have a feeling that your good wishes would go a long way now. Is it altogether fantastic to believe that the good-will of my first friend would help to bring me prosperity?”

The white-haired lady’s eyes grew momentarily soft, and, with a gravity that did not seem out of place, she moved forward and laid her hand on a big horse’s neck, and smiled when the dumb beast responded to her gentle touch.

“It is a good work,” she said. “Lance, there is more than dollars, or the bread that somebody is needing, behind what you are doing, and because I loved your mother I know how her approval would have followed you. And now sow in hope, and God speed your plough!”

She turned away almost abruptly, and Witham stood still, with one hand closed tightly and a little deeper tint in the bronze of his face, sensible at once of an unchanged resolution and a horrible degradation. Then he saw that the Colonel had helped Miss Barrington into the saddle and her niece was speaking.

“I have something to ask Mr. Courthorne, and will overtake you,” she said.

The others rode on, and the girl turned to Witham, “I made you a promise and did my best to keep it but I find it harder than I fancied it would be,” she said. “I want you to release me.”

“I should like to hear your reasons,” said Witham.

The girl made a faint gesture of impatience. “Of course, if you insist!”

“I do,” said Witham quietly.

“Then I promised you to have all my holding sown this year, and I am still willing to do so; but, though my uncle makes no protests I know he feels my opposition very keenly, and it hurts me horribly. Unspoken reproaches are the worst to bear, you know, and now Dane and some of the others are following your lead, it is painful to feel that I am taking part with them against the man who has always been kind to me.”

“And you would prefer to be loyal to Colonel Barrington even if it cost you a good deal?”

“Of course!” said Maud Barrington. “Can you ask me?”

Witham saw the sparkle in her eyes and the half-contemptuous pride in the poise of the shapely head. Loyalty, it was evident, was not a figure of speech with her, but he felt that he had seen enough and turned his face aside.

“I knew it would be difficult when I asked,” he said. “Still, I cannot give you back that promise. We are going to see a great change this year, and I have set my heart on making all I can for you.”

“But why should you?” asked Maud Barrington, somewhat astonished that she did not feel more angry.

“Well,” said Witham gravely, “I may tell you by and by, and in the meanwhile you can set it down to vanity. This may be my last venture at Silverdale, and I want to make it a big success.”

The girl glanced at him sharply, and it was because the news caused her an unreasonable concern that there was a trace of irony in her voice.

“Your last venture! Have we been unkind to you or does it imply that, as you once insinuated, an exemplary life becomes monotonous?”

Witham laughed. “No. I should like to stay here – a very long while,” he said; and the girl saw he spoke the truth as she watched him glance wistfully at the splendid teams, great ploughs, and rich, black soil. “In fact, strange as it may appear, it will be virtue, given the rein for once, that drives me out when I go away.”

“But where are you going to?”

Witham glanced vaguely across the prairie, and the girl was puzzled by the look in his eyes. “Back to my own station,” he said softly, as though to himself, and then turned with a little shrug of his shoulders. “In the meanwhile there is a good deal to do, and once more I am sorry I cannot release you.”

“Then, there is an end of it. You could not expect me to beg you to, so we will discuss the practical difficulty. I cannot under the circumstances borrow my uncle’s teams, and I am told I have not sufficient men or horses to put a large crop in.”

“Of course!” said Witham quietly. “Well, I have now the best teams and machines on this part of the prairie, and am bringing Ontario men in. I will do the ploughing – and, if it will make it easier for you, you can pay me for the services.”

There was a little flush on the girl’s face. “It is all distasteful, but as you will not give me back my word, I will keep it to the letter. Still, it almost makes me reluctant to ask you a further favour.”

“This one is promised before you ask it,” said Witham quietly.

It cost Maud Barrington some trouble to make her wishes clear, and Witham’s smile was not wholly one of pleasure as he listened. One of the young English lads, who was, it appeared, a distant connexion of the girl’s, had been losing large sums of money at a gaming table, and seeking other equally undesirable relaxations at the railroad settlement. For the sake of his mother in England, Miss Barrington desired him brought to his senses, but was afraid to appeal to the Colonel, whose measures were occasionally more draconic than wise.

“I will do what I can,” said Witham. “Still, I am not sure that a lad of the kind is worth your worrying over, and I am a trifle curious as to what induced you to entrust the mission to me?”

The girl felt embarrassed, but she saw that an answer was expected. “Since you ask, it occurred to me that you could do it better than anybody else,” she said. “Please don’t misunderstand me; but I fancy it is the other man who is leading him away.”

Witham smiled somewhat grimly. “Your meaning is quite plain, and I am already looking forward to the encounter with my fellow-gambler. You believe that I will prove a match for him?”

Maud Barrington, to her annoyance, felt the blood creep to her forehead, but she looked at the man steadily, noticing the quiet forcefulness beneath his somewhat caustic amusement.

“Yes,” she said simply; “and I shall be grateful.”

In another few minutes she was galloping across the prairie, and when she rejoined her aunt and Barrington, endeavoured to draw out the latter’s opinion respecting Courthorne’s venture by a few discreet questions.

“Heaven knows where he was taught it, but there is no doubt that the man is an excellent farmer,” he said. “It is a pity that he is also, to all intents and purposes, mad.”

Miss Barrington glanced at her niece, and both of them smiled, for the Colonel usually took for granted the insanity of any one who questioned his opinions.

In the meanwhile, Witham sat swaying on the driving-seat, mechanically guiding the horses and noticing how the prairie sod rolled away in black waves beneath the great plough. He heard the crackle of fibres beneath the triple shares, and the swish of greasy loam along the mouldboard’s side; but his thoughts were far away, and when he raised his head, he looked into the dim future beyond the long furrow that cut the skyline on the rise.

It was shadowy and uncertain, but one thing was clear to him, and that was that he could not stay in Silverdale. At first he had almost hoped he might do this, for the good land, and the means of efficiently working it, had been a horrible temptation. That was before he reckoned on Maud Barrington’s attractions; but of late he had seen what these were leading him to, and all that was good in him recoiled from an attempt to win her. Once he had dared to wonder whether it could be done, for his grim life had left him self-centred and bitter, but that mood had passed, and it was with disgust he looked back upon it. Now he knew that the sooner he left Silverdale, the less difficult it would be to forget her; but he was still determined to vindicate himself by the work he did, and make her affairs secure. Then, with or without a confession, he would slip back into the obscurity he came from.

While he worked the soft wind rioted about him, and the harbingers of summer passed north in battalions overhead – crane, brent goose, and mallard – in crescents, skeins, and wedges, after the fashion of their kind. Little long-tailed gophers whisked across the whitened sod, and when the great plough rolled through the shadows of a bluff, jack rabbits, pied white and grey, scurried amidst the rustling leaves. Even the birches were fragrant in that vivifying air, and seemed to rejoice as all animate creatures did; but the man’s face grew more sombre as the day of toil wore on. Still, he did his work with the grim, unwavering diligence that had already carried him, dismayed but unyielding, through years of drought and harvest hail, and the stars shone down on the prairie when at last he loosed his second team.

Then, standing in the door of his lonely homestead, he glanced at the great shadowy granaries and barns, and clenched his hand as he saw what he could do if the things that had been forced upon him were rightfully his. He knew his own mettle, and that he could hold them if he would; but the pale, cold face of a woman rose up in judgment against him, and he also knew that because of the love of her, that was casting its toils about him, he must give them up.

Far back on the prairie a lonely coyote howled, and a faint wind, that was now like snow-cooled wine, brought the sighing of limitless grasses out of the silence. There was no cloud in the crystalline ether, and something in the vastness and stillness that spoke of infinity brought a curious sense of peace to him. Impostor though he was, he would leave Silverdale better than he found it, and afterwards it would be of no great moment what became of him. Countless generations of toiling men had borne their petty sorrows before him, and gone back to the dust they sprang from; but still, in due succession, harvest followed seed-time, and the world whirled on. Then, remembering that, in the meanwhile, he had much to do which would commence with the sun on the morrow, he went back into the house and shook the fancies from him.

CHAPTER XII – MASTERY RECOGNIZED

There was, considering the latest price of wheat, a somewhat astonishing attendance in the long room of the hotel at the railroad settlement one Saturday evening. A big stove in the midst of it diffused a stuffy and almost unnecessary heat, gaudy nickelled lamps an uncertain brilliancy, and the place was filled with the drifting smoke of indifferent tobacco. Oleographs, barbaric in colour and drawing, hung about the roughly-boarded walls, and any critical stranger would have found the saloon comfortless and tawdry.

It was, however, filled that night with bronzed-faced men who expected nothing better. Most of them wore jackets of soft black leather or embroidered deerskin, and the jean trousers and long boots of not a few apparently stood in need of repairing, though the sprinkling of more conventional apparel and paler faces showed that the storekeepers of the settlement had been drawn together, as well as the prairie farmers who had driven in to buy provisions or take up their mail. There was, however, but little laughter, and their voices were low, for boisterousness and assertion are not generally met with on the silent prairie. Indeed, the attitude of some of the men was mildly deprecatory, as though they felt that in assisting in what was going forward they were doing an unusual thing. Still, the eyes of all were turned toward the table where a man, who differed widely in appearance from most of them, dealt out the cards.

He wore city clothes, and a white shirt with a fine diamond in the front of it, while there was a keen intentness behind the half-ironical smile in his somewhat colourless face. The whiteness of his long, nervous fingers and the quickness of his gestures would also have stamped him as a being of different order from the slowly-spoken prairie farmers, while the slenderness of the little pile of coins in front of him testified that his endeavours to tempt them to speculation on games of chance had met with no very marked success as yet. Gambling for stakes of moment is not a popular amusement in that country, where the soil demands his best from every man in return for the scanty dollars it yields him, but the gamester had chosen his time well, and the men who had borne the dreary solitude of winter in outlying farms, and now only saw another adverse season opening before them, were for once in the mood to clutch at any excitement that would relieve the monotony of their toilsome lives.

A few were betting small sums with an apparent lack of interest which did not in the least deceive the dealer, and when he handed a few dollars out he laughed a little as he turned to the bar-keeper.

“Set them up again. I want a drink to pass the time,” he said. “I’ll play you at anything you like to put a name to, boys, if this game don’t suit you, but you’ll have to give me the chance of making my hotel bill. In my country I’ve seen folks livelier at a funeral.”

The glasses were handed round, but when the gambler reached out towards the silver at his side, a big bronzed-skinned rancher stopped him.

“No,” he drawled. “We’re not sticking you for a locomotive tank, and this comes out of my treasury. I’ll call you three dollars and take my chances on the draw.”

“Well,” said the dealer, “that’s a little more encouraging. Anybody wanting to make it better?”

A young lad in elaborately-embroidered deerskin with a flushed face leaned upon the table. “Show you how we play cards in the old country,” he said. “I’ll make it thirty – for a beginning.”

There was a momentary silence, for the lad had staked heavily and lost of late, but one or two more bets were made. Then the cards were turned up, and the lad smiled fatuously as he took up his winnings.

“Now, I’ll let you see,” he said. “This time we’ll make it fifty.”

He won twice more in succession, and the men closed in about the table, while, for the dealer knew when to strike, the glasses went round again, and in the growing interest nobody quite noticed who paid for the refreshment. Then, while the dollars began to trickle in, the lad flung a bill for a hundred down.