The Settler

The dramatist loves to make great events follow in rapid sequence. It is the need of his art. But in life the tragic mixes with the commonplace. Even Lady Macbeth must have, on occasion, joked or talked scandal with her handmaidens. And as these two looked out over the wheat, there was naught to indicate the shadow which lay between them.

"Finest stand I ever saw," Carter answered. "Five-foot straw, well headed, plump in the grain; ought to grade Number One Extra Hard. We'll make on that wheat, little girl."

"Do you really think so?"

He turned quickly.

"Those women at the picnic – " She explained her dubious tone. "They said you were foolish to put in so much wheat. 'What kind of a darn fool is your husband, anyway?' that Mrs. MacCloud asked me. 'He kain't never draw all that wheat to Lone Tree. Take him a month to make two trips. 'Tain't no use to raise grain without a railroad. We folks hain't put in more'n enough for bread an' seed.'"

He laughed, as much at her clever mimicry as at Mrs. MacCloud's frankness. "If they had put in more I wouldn't have sown any. Could have bought it cheaper from them. But as they didn't – Do you know that every man in this settlement makes at least one trip a month to Lone Tree during the winter? Well, they do, and they'll be glad to make expenses freighting in my wheat. With grain at seventy a bushel, a load will bring thirty dollars at the cars, and I can hire all the teams I want at three a trip."

"Why" – his foresight caused her a little gasp – "how clever! I should never have thought of that."

His eyes twinkled his appreciation of her wifely admiration, and, taking her chin between his hands, he looked down into her eyes. "What's more, when that wheat money comes in, you an' me 'll jest run down to Winnipeg an' turn loose on the dry-goods stores."

It was the first hint of his knowledge of the turning, dyeing, the shifts she had made with her wardrobe, and he made a winning. The knowledge that he had seen and understood caused the wedge to tremble and almost fall out.

"Can we – afford it?" she asked, willing now to go without a thing.

"Don't have to afford necessities. Breaks me up to see you going shy of things."

For the last three days he had bestowed the parting kiss. This morning he received it – a warm one at that – and as he strode off stableward, her burst of singing echoed his cheerful whistle. She was quite happy the next few days planning for their descent on the shops. She sang at her work – warbling that was natural as that of the little bird which prinks and plumes for its mate in the morning sunlight. Reflecting her happy mood, Carter was humorously cheerful – so pleased and satisfied that she stared when, one evening, he came in, gloomy and depressed.

His black mood had come out of the east with a moaning wind that now herded leaden clouds over dun prairies. For one day rain pelted down, then, veering north, the bitter wind blew hard for a second day. That evening it died, and a pale sun swung down a cloudless sky to a colorless horizon. Under its cold light the wheat stood erect, motionless, devoid of its usual sighing life. A hush, portentous of change, brooded over all.

From their doorway Helen heard Hines, three miles away, rating his dog. "Hain't no more gumption than an Englishman, durn you! Sick 'em, now!" followed the maligned animal's bark and the thunder of scurrying hoofs.

"How clear and calm it is!" she commented, as Carter came up from the stables.

He glanced at the thermometer beside the door. "Too clear. I'm afraid it is all off with the wheat."

"Why? What do you mean?"

He turned from her astonished eyes. "Frost."

"Frost? You are surely mistaken? See how sunny it is!"

Shaking his head, he laid a forefinger on the thermometer. "Six o'clock, and the silver is down to thirty-five."

At dusk it had lowered another degree, and throughout the northland a hundred thousand farmers were watching, with Carter, its slow recession. On the fertile wheat plains of southern Manitoba, through the vast gloom of the Dakotas, to the uttermost limits of Minnesota, the mercury focussed the interest of half a million trembling souls whose fire-fly lanterns dusted the continental gloom. Prayers, women's tears, men's agonized curses marked its decline, that, like an etching tool, graved deep lines on haggard faces in Chicago, Liverpool, and London far away.

At thirty-two Carter lit the smudges of wet straw, and simultaneously the vast spread of night flamed out in smoke and fire. "I don't go much on it," he told Helen. "But some believe in it, and I ain't agoing to miss a chance."

He was right. Pale thief, the frost stole in under the reek and breathed his cold breath on the wheat. Holding his instrument, at ten o'clock, in the thickest smoke, Carter saw that it registered twenty-seven. Five degrees of frost and the cold of dawn still to come! Raising the glass, he dashed it to pieces at his feet.

It was done. Reverberating through the land, the smash of his glass typified the shattering of innumerable fortunes, the crash of business houses. The pistol-shot that wound up the affairs of some desperate gambler was but one echo. Surging wildly, the calamity would affect far more than the growers of wheat. Iron-workers, miners, operatives in a hundred branches of industry would shiver under the cold breath of the frost. For now the farmer would buy less cotton, the operative pay more for his flour, the miner earn a scantier wage.

True, the balance swings ever even. This year ryots of India, Argentine peons, Egyptian fellaheen would reap where they had not sown, gather where they had not strawed. Another year a Russian blight, Nile drouth, hot wind of Argentine would swing prices in favor of the northland. But in this was small comfort for the stricken people.

"All gone!" Carter exclaimed at midnight. "The feathers are frozen offen them bonnets."

Helen sensed the bitterness under his lightness. "Never mind, dear," she comforted. "I really don't care. You did your best."

He had done his best! To a strong man the phrase stabs, signifying the victory of conditions. He winced, as from an offered blow. It was the last drop in his cup, the signal of his defeat. It marked the destruction of this his last plan for her. He had not, in the beginning, intended that she should ever set her hand to drudgery. His love was to come between her and all that was sordid, squalid. If the railroad contract had materialized, she should have had a little home in Winnipeg where she might enjoy the advantages of her early life. He had planned for a servant – two, if she could use them – and all that he asked in return was that she should bring beauty into his life, adorn his home, sweeten his days with the aroma of her delicate presence. In this small castle of Spain he had installed his beauty of the sweet mouth, golden hair, pretty profile; and now, out of his own disappointment, he read reproach in the hazel eyes that looked out from the ruins.

Long after her sleep-breathing freighted the dusk of their bedroom, he lay gazing wide-eyed into the black future. A sudden light would have shown his eyes blank, expressionless, for his spirit was afar, questing for other material with which to rebuild his castle. In thought he was travelling Silver Creek, from its headwaters in the timber limits to its source where it flowed into the mighty Assiniboin. It was a small stream – too small to drive logs except for a month on the snow waters. But with a dam here – another there – a third on the flats – rough structures of logs with a stone and gravel filling, yet sufficient to conserve the falling waters! The drive could then be sent down from dam to dam! During the night he travelled every yard of the stream, placing his dams, and at dawn rose, content in his eyes.

Slipping quietly from the house, he saddled the Devil and led him quietly by while Helen still slept, and an hour later rode up to Bender's cabin. The Cougar was also there, and from dubious head-waggings the two relapsed into thoughtful acquiescence as Carter unfolded his plans.

"She'll go down like an eel on ice!" Bender enthusiastically agreed. "All you want now is backing. Funny, ain't it, that nobody ever thought o' that before? Say" – he regarded Carter with open admiration – "you're particular hell when it comes to thinking. If I'd a headpiece like yourn – "

"You hain't," the Cougar coldly interrupted, "so don't waste no time telling us what you might ha' done. Get down to business. I know a man" – he thoughtfully surveyed Carter – "that financed half a dozen big lumbering contrac's on the Superior construction work. He'll sire anything that looks like ten per cent. an' this of yourn will sure turn fifty. Come inside an' I'll write you a letter."

What of the Cougar's inexperience with the pen, the morning was well on when Carter rode back to his cabin. If Helen had looked closely she might have seen the new resolution that inhered in his smile, but she had been concerned with her own reflections. Somehow, things had not appeared this morning as they did last night. Crude daylight shows events, like tired faces, in all their haggardness, and their complexion was not improved by the steam from her wash-tub. Time and again she had paused to survey her hands, creased and wrinkled by cooking in hot water. Her bare arms recalled her first party-dress, and set her again in the sweet past. Beside it the present seemed infinitely hopeless, squalid, dreary. As she rubbed and scrubbed on her wash-board, life resolved itself into an endless procession of wash-days, and tears had mingled with the sweat that fell from her face to her bosom.

Noting her red eyes, Carter was tempted to disclose his new hope, but remembered the failure of previous plans and refrained. As yet nothing was certain. He would not expose her to the risk of another disappointment. He rightly interpreted her sigh when he told her that he would have to go down to Winnipeg on business about the timber limits, and his heart smote him when, looking back, he saw her standing in the door. Dejection resided in the parting wave of her hand, utter hopelessness.

That lonely figure in the log doorway stuck in his consciousness throughout his negotiations, causing him to hustle matters in a way that simply scandalized the Cougar's man, a banker of the old school. Yet his hurry served rather than hurt his cause. While the very novelty of it made him gasp, the banker was impressed. In private he informed his moneyed partners that such a chance and such a man rarely came together. "He's a hustler, and the profit is there," he said, in consultation. "A big profit. We can cut lumber ten per cent under the railroad price and yet clear twenty-five cents on the dollar."

That settled it. Half a day later Carter was on his homeward way, bearing with him the power to draw on Winnipeg or Montreal for moneys necessary for supplies, men, and teams. Running home from Lone Tree, he whiled away the miles with thoughts of Helen's joy. He pictured her, radiant, flushed, listening to his news, and, quickening to the thought, he raced, full gallop, the last mile up to his door.

His face burst into sunshine as, in response to his call, he heard her cross the floor. Then his smile died, and he stared at Mrs. Leslie. With the exception of an occasional glimpse as they met and passed on trail, it was the first he had seen of her since the soft summer evening when she laid illicit love at his feet. But no hint of that bitter memory inhered in her greeting.

"How are you, Mr. Carter?" she cried, in her old, gay way. "I think you are the meanest man in Silver Creek. Married a year, and neither you nor Helen have set foot in our house. You are a regular Blue beard. But you needn't think that you can hide from us forever. I just pocketed my pride, ignored your snub, and made my third call. Yes" – she emphatically nodded her pretty head – "the third, sir. But I forgive you; come in and have some tea. Helen is down at the stables hunting eggs to beat up a cake."

Covering his vexation with some light answer, he drove on to the stables, the life and light gone out of him, his face the heaviest that Helen had ever seen. "She called," she answered his abrupt question, "and I have to entertain her." Then, piqued by his coldness, she went on: "For matter of that, I do not see why you should try to cut me off from her companionship! She is the only woman I care for in the settlements!"

If he had only told her! But causes light as the falling of a leaf are sufficient to deflect the entire current of a life, and it was perfectly natural that, in his bitter disappointment, he also should give way to a feeling of pique. The reason trembled to his lips, and there paused, stayed by the resentment in her eyes.

"As you see fit," he answered. "Now I have to drive over to see Bender, on business."

"Won't you wait for some tea?"

"No. And don't wait supper. I may be late."

Hurt, she watched him drive away; then, as he suddenly reined in, she dashed the tears from her eyes. "Here's a letter for you," he called. "Got it from the office as I came by."

He nodded in answer to Mrs. Leslie's cheery wave as he rolled by the cabin. It was more than cold, yet, sitting chin on hands, that lady smiled cheerfully when Helen came up from the stable. "Don't apologize, my dear," she laughed. "Men are such fools. Always doing something to hurt their own happiness. Just banish that rueful expression and read your letter."

"What's the matter?" The question was called forth by Helen's sudden cry of dismay. She glanced at the wedding-cards that Helen offered. "Hum! Old flame of yours, eh? These regrets will assail one."

However, she knit her straight brows over the enclosure. In part, it ran: "We were so pleased to hear of your wonderful marriage from your auntie Crandall. It was just like you to announce the bare fact, but she told us all about it. A railroad king! Just fancy! He must be nice or our delicate Helen would never consent to bury herself in the wilderness. Do you know I have been just dying to see him, and now I shall, for we are passing through your country on our way to the Orient. Which is your station?" Followed sixteen pages of questions, description of trousseau, and other feminine matters which Helen reserved for future consumption.

Could she have laid tongue, just then, on Auntie Crandall, that lady had surely regretted her enlargements on Helen's modest statement of her husband's prospects. Lacking that easement of feeling, she cried. This visit capped her misery, brought the long record of misfortune, discomfort, disaster to a fitting climax.

"Poor child!" Mrs. Leslie patted her shoulder. "But why did you tell her such crammers? It was the good auntie?" She tilted her nose. "For the honor of the family, we lie, eh? Heaven help us! Your friend – what's her name? – Mrs. Ravell – she's rich, of course? Thought so – couldn't be otherwise – trust the malignant fates for that. Well – " She glanced meditatively about the cabin. Instead of lime-washing the logs, settler fashion, Helen had left them to darken with age, ornamenting them with a pair of magnificent moose horns and other woodland trophies. Tanned bear-skins covered a big lounge that ran across one end; buffalo robes and other skins took the place of mats on the floor. Mrs. Leslie nodded approval. "Not bad. Quite wild-westy, in fact. You will simply have to live up to it. You have given up your town-house for the present and are rusticating while your hubby directs some of his splendid schemes for the regeneration of this section – "

"Oh!" Helen burst in. "I couldn't say that. It would be – "

"Lying? Nonsense, child! Have you a town-house? No! Well, what are you kicking about?" Mrs. Leslie's descent to the vernacular was as forcible as confusing. Before Helen had time to differentiate between the status involved by "not having a town-house" and giving one up her temptress ran on. "That is it. You are rusticating. Now, I can lend you some of my things – glass, china, and so on. When do they arrive?" She consulted the letter. "Hooray! Your husband will be gone all next week, and they come – let me see: one, two, three – next Friday. Couldn't be better."

Helen blushed under her meaning glance. "No, no! It would be wicked."

"Why not?" Mrs. Leslie laughed merrily. "They just dropped in and there's no time to send for him. Quite simple."

"Do you think I'm ashamed of him?" Helen asked, flushing.

Mrs. Leslie trimmed her sails to the squall. "Certainly not. He's a dear. You know I always liked him. But – if your friends were to make a long stay it would be different. You couldn't hide his light under a bushel. But a two days' visit? What could they learn of him in that time? The real him? They would no more than gather his departures from the conventional. I wouldn't expose him to unfriendly criticism. Frankly, I wouldn't, dear, at the cost of a little fib!"

The flush faded, yet Helen shook her head.

"As you will." Rising, the little cynic shrugged as she drew on her riding-gloves. "But at least take a day to think it over."

"No!" Helen shook vigorous denial. "I shall tell him to-night."

She was perfectly sincere in her intention, and if Carter had returned his usual good-natured self she would certainly have told him. But Mrs. Leslie's presence had angered him and destroyed his native judgment. He remembered that this was the outcome of Helen's invitation to Mrs. Leslie at the picnic, and his heart swelled at the thought that she should, of her own volition, go back to friends whom she knew that he despised. He felt the folly of his brooding, even applied strong language to himself for being many kinds of a fool. But his reasonable intention to open his budget of good news on his return was never carried out because of the coldness of her reception. Nervous from her own news, piqued by his curt leave-taking, she served his supper in silence or answered his few remarks in monosyllables. Nothing was said that night, and he retired without offering the usual kiss.

There he offended greatly. Her woman's unreason would, for that, accept no excuse. So when, after working off his own mood next morning, he came in to breakfast, he found her still the same. Really offended, she served him, as at the previous meal, in silence, and as, afterwards, she went about her work, her lashes veiled her eyes, her lips pouting.

It was their first real quarrel, and the very strangeness, novelty of her mood made it charming. But when, under urge of sudden tenderness, he tried to encircle her waist, she drew away, and, afflicted with a sense of injustice, he did not try again. There again he made a mistake. Justice has no concern with love. It is empirical, knows no law but its own. She wanted to be taken and kissed in spite of herself, as have all women on similar occasions, from the cave maidens down.

It so happened that she was in the bedroom when he left the house, and she did not see that he had taken with him the bundle she had packed the preceding night. She still intended to mention the letter. Indeed, as she heard his step on the threshold, she thought, "He'll stop at the door for his clothes."

But he did not; and hurrying out at the sound of scurrying hoofs, she was just in time to see him vanish behind a poplar bluff. She called, called, and called, then sat down and wept, the more miserable because of a secret, guilty feeling of relief.

XII

THE BREAK

For three days a brown smoke had hovered over the black line of distant spruce. It was far away, fifty miles at least. Yet anxious eyes turned constantly its way until, the evening of the fourth day, the omen faded. Then a sigh of relief passed over the settlements. "Back-fired itself out among the lakes," the settlers told one another. Then, being recovered from their scare, they invidiously reflected on the Indian agent who permitted his wards to start fires to scare out the deer. Nor did the fact that the agent was blameless in the matter take from the satisfaction accruing from their grumblings.

That evening five persons sat with Helen at supper, for she had invited the Leslies and Danvers, Molyneux's farm pupil, to meet her guests. For her this meal was the culmination of days of anxious planning. To set out the table she and Mrs. Leslie had ransacked their respective establishments, and she blushed when Kate Ravell enthused over the result.

"What beautiful china!" she exclaimed, picking up one of Mrs. Leslie's Wedgwood cups. "We have nothing like this." Then, glancing at the white napery, crystal, and silver, she said, "Who would think that we were two thousand miles from civilization?"

It was, indeed, hard to realize. Obedient to Mrs. Leslie's orders, her husband and Danvers had fished – albeit with reluctance – forgotten dress-suits from bottom deeps of leather portmanteaus. She herself looked her prettiest in a gown of rich black lace superimposed on some white material, and, carrying her imperative generosity to the limit, she had forced one of her own dinner-dresses upon Helen. Of a filmy, delicate blue, it brought out the young wife's golden beauty. From the low corsage her slender throat and delicate face rose like a pink lily from a violet calyx. Usually she wore her redundant hair coiled in a thick braid around the crown of her head for comfort; but to-night it was done upon her neck in a loose figure of eight that revealed its mass and sheen. Looking from Mrs. Leslie to Helen, Kate Ravell had secretly congratulated herself upon having, despite her husband's protest, slipped one of her own pretty dresses into his valise.

His laugh, a wholesome peal that accorded with his good-humored face, followed her remark. "She didn't think that at Lone Tree," he said. "A lumber-wagon was the best the liveryman could do for us in the way of conveyance, and when Kate asked if he hadn't a carriage he looked astonished and scratched his head.

"'Ain't but one in town,' he answered, 'an' it belongs to Doc Ellis. 'Tain't been used sence he druv the small-pox case down to the Brandon pest-house. I 'low he'd let you have it.'"

His wife echoed his laugh. "It was a little rough, but this – it's great!" She pointed out through the open door over the wheat, golden under the setting sun, to the dark green and yellow of woods and prairies. "You are to be envied, Nell. Your house is so artistic. The life must be ideal – "

Inwardly, Mrs. Leslie snorted: "Humph! If she could see her milking, up to ankles in mud on rainy days – or feeding those filthy calves?" Aloud, she said, "Unfortunately, Helen isn't here very often – spends most of her time in Winnipeg." Ignoring Helen's pleading look, she ran on, "Did you store your things, my dear, or let the house furnished?"

Thus entrapped, Helen could only answer that her goods were stored, and her embarrassment deepened when Mrs. Leslie continued: "It is such a pity, Mrs. Ravell, that you could not have met Mr. Carter! He is such a dear fellow, so quiet and refined. Fred" – Leslie's grin faded under her frown – "what is the matter?"

"A crumb, my dear," he apologized. "Excuse me, please."

"We shall have to return you to the nursery." Her glance returned to Kate Ravell, and, oblivious of the entreaty in Helen's eyes, she ran on in praise of Carter. He was so reserved! The reserve of strength that goes with good-nature! Resourceful – and so she flowed on with her panegyrics. She was not altogether insincere. Helen caught herself blushing with pleasure whenever, leaving her fictions, Mrs. Leslie touched on some sterling quality. Twice she was startled to hear put into words subtilties that she herself had only felt, and on each occasion she narrowly watched Mrs. Leslie, an adumbration of suspicion forming in her mind. But each time it was removed by absurd praise of hypothetical qualities or virtues Carter did not possess. So Mrs. Leslie praised and teased.

What influenced her? It is hard to answer a question that inheres in the complexities of such a frivolous yet passionate nature. Naturally good-natured, she would help Helen out in all things that did not cross her own purposes. The sequel proves that she had not yet got Carter out of her hot blood. Given which two things, her action, teasings, and panegyrics are at least understandable.

"We are very sorry," Kate Ravell said when Mrs. Leslie gave pause. "We did wish to see him. Do you suppose, Helen, that we might if we stayed another day?"