Chapter 18

A DELICATE ERRAND.

There was sharp frost outside, and the prairie was white with a thin sprinkle of snow, when a little party sat down to supper in the Hastings homestead one Saturday evening. Hastings sat at the head of the table, his wife at the foot with her little daughters, Agatha, Sproatly, and Winifred between them. The latter two had just driven over from the railroad settlement, as they did now and then, which explained why the meal, which is usually served early in the evening, had been delayed an hour or so. The two hired men, whom Mrs. Hastings had not kept waiting, had gone out to some task in the barn or stables.

By and bye Sproatly took a bundle of papers out of his pocket and laid them on the table. There had been a remarkable change in his appearance of late, for he now wore store clothes, and the skin coat he had taken off when he came in was, as his hostess had noticed, a new one. It occurred to her that there was a certain significance in this, though Sproatly had changed his occupation some little time ago, and now drove about the prairie on behalf of certain makers of agricultural implements.

"I called for your mail and Gregory's before we left," he said. "I had to go round to see him, which is partly what made us so late, though Winifred couldn't get away as soon as she expected. They've floods of wheat coming in to the elevators, and I understand that the milling people can't take another bushel in."

Mrs. Hastings glanced at Agatha, who understood what she meant, for Sproatly had hitherto spoken of Winifred circumspectly as Miss Rawlinson. Hastings, however, took the papers which Agatha handed him, and laid them aside.

"We'll let them wait until supper's over. I don't expect any news that's particularly good," he said. "The bottom's apparently dropping out of the wheat market."

"Hamilton can't get cars enough, and we'll have to shut down in another day or two unless they turn up," said Winifred. "It's much the same all along the line. The Winnipeg traffic people wired us they haven't an empty car in the yards. Why do you rush the grain in that way? It's bound to break the market."

Hastings smiled rather drily. "Well," he said, "a good many of us have bills to meet. For another thing, they've had a heavy crop in Manitoba, Dakota, and Minnesota, and I suppose some folks have an idea they'll get in first before the other people swamp the Eastern markets. I think they're foolish. It's a temporary scare. Prices will stiffen by and bye."

"That's what Hamilton says, but I suppose the thing is natural. Men are very like sheep, aren't they?"

Hastings laughed. "Well," he admitted, "we are, in some respects. When prices break a little we generally rush to sell. One or two of my neighbours are, however, holding on, and it's hardly likely that very much of my wheat will be flung on to a falling market."

"We have been getting a good deal from the Range."

There was displeasure in Hastings's face. "Gregory's selling largely on Harry's account?"

"They've been hauling wheat in to us for the last few weeks," said Winifred.

Hastings, as Agatha noticed, glanced at his wife significantly, but she interposed and forbade any further conversation of the kind until supper was over, while when the table had been cleared Hastings opened his papers. The rest sat expectantly silent, while he turned them over one after another.

"No," he said, "there's no news of Harry, and I'm afraid it's scarcely possible that we'll hear anything of him this winter."

Agatha was conscious that Mrs. Hastings's eyes were upon her, and she sat very still, though her heart was beating a little faster than usual. Hastings, however, went on again.

"The _Colonist_ has a line or two about a barque from Alaska, which put into Victoria short of stores," he said. "She was sent up to an A.C.C. factory, and had to clear out before she was ready. The ice, it seems, was closing in unusually early. A steam whaler at Portland reports the same thing, and from the news brought by a steamer from Japan all communication with North-Eastern Asia is already cut off."

None of the others said anything for a moment or two, and Agatha, leaning back in her chair, glanced round the room. There was not much furniture in it, but, though this was unusual on the prairie, door and double casements were guarded by heavy hangings. The big brass lamp overhead shed down a cheerful light, the birch billets in the stove snapped and crackled noisily, and its pipe, which was far too hot to touch, diffused a drowsy heat. One could lounge beside it contentedly, knowing that the stinging frost was drying the snow to dusty powder outside. That heightened the contrast, for Agatha pictured the little schooner bound fast in the Northern ice, and then two or three travel-worn men crouching in a tiny tent buffeted by an Arctic gale. She could see the poles bend, and the tricings strain.

After that, with a sudden transition, her thoughts went back to the early morning when Wyllard had driven away, and every detail of the scene rose up clearly in her mind. She saw him and the stolid Dampier sitting in the waggon, with nothing in their manner to suggest that they were setting out upon a very perilous venture, and she felt his hand close tight upon her fingers, as it had done just before the waggon jolted away from the homestead. She could once more see it growing smaller and smaller on the white prairie, until it dipped behind the crest of a low rise, and the sinking beat of hoofs died away. Then, at least, she had realised that he had started on the first stage of a journey which might lead him through the ice-bound gates of the North to the rest that awaits the souls of the sailormen. She could not, however, imagine him shrinking. Gripping helm, or hauling in the sled traces, he would gaze with quiet eyes steadfastly ahead, even if they saw only the passage from this world to the next. Once more, as it had done that morning, a curious thrill ran through her, and there was pride as well as regret in it. Then she became conscious that Hastings was speaking.

"What took you round by the Range, Jim?" he asked.

"Collecting," said Sproatly. "I sold Gregory a couple of binders earlier in the season, but, as it happened, I couldn't get a dollar out of him." He laughed. "Of course, if it had been anybody else I'd have stayed until he handed over, but I couldn't press Gregory too hard after quartering myself upon him as I did last winter, though I'm rather afraid my employers wouldn't appreciate that kind of delicacy."

Mrs. Hastings looked thoughtful. "Gregory should have been able to pay. He thrashed out a moderately good crop."

"About two-thirds of what it should have been, and I've reason for believing that he has been putting up a mortgage. Interest's heavy. There's another matter. I wonder if you've heard that he's getting rid of two of Harry's hands? I mean Pat and Tom Moran."

"You're sure of that?" Hastings asked somewhat sharply.

"Tom told me."

Mrs. Hastings leaned forward suddenly in her chair. "Then," she said, "I'm going to drive across on Monday, and have a few words with Gregory. Did Moran tell you that Harry had decided to keep the two of them on throughout the year?"

"He wasn't very explicit, but he seemed to feel he had a grievance against Gregory. Of course, in a way, you can't blame Gregory. He's in charge, and it isn't in him to carry out Harry's policy. This fall in wheat is getting on his nerves, and in any case he'd probably have held his hand and cut down the crop next year."

"I do blame him," and Mrs. Hastings turned to Agatha. "You will understand that in a general way there's not much that can be done when the snow's upon the ground, and as one result of it the hired man prefers to engage himself for the year. To secure himself from being turned adrift when harvest's over he will frequently make a concession in wages. Now I know Harry intended to keep those two men on, and Tom Moran, who has a little half-cleared ranch back somewhere in the bush of Ontario, came out here tempted by higher wages. I understand he had to raise a few dollars or give the place up, and he left his wife behind. A good many of the little men can't live upon their holdings all the while. Well, I'm going over on Monday to tell Gregory he has got to keep them, and you're coming with me."

Agatha said nothing. In the first place, she knew that if Mrs. Hastings had made her mind up she would gain nothing by objecting, and in addition to this she was conscious of a certain desire to go. It appeared in some respects an unreasonable wish, but she felt deep down in her that if Wyllard had let the men understand that he would not dismiss them the promise, implied or explicit, must be redeemed. He would not have attempted to release himself from it--she was sure of that--and it appeared intolerable to her that another should be permitted to do anything that would unfavourably reflect on him. Then, somewhat to her relief, Hastings started another topic.

"You have sold quite a few binders and harrows one way or another, haven't you, Jim?" he said.

Sproatly laughed. "I have," he said. "As I told the Company's Western representative some time ago, a man who could sell patent medicine to the folks round here could do a good trade in anything. He admitted that my contention sounded reasonable, but I didn't wear store clothes then, and he seemed very far from sure of me. Anyway, he gave me a show, and now I've got two or three quite complimentary letters from the Company. They've added a few dollars to my salary, and hint that it's possible they may put me in charge of an implement store."

"And you're satisfied?"

"Well," said Sproatly, with an air of reflection, "in some respects, I suppose I am. In others, the thing's galling. You have to report who you've called upon, and, if you couldn't do business, why they bought somebody else's machines. If you can't get a farmer to take you in you have to put up at a hotel. There's no more camping in a birch bluff under your waggon. Besides, you have to wear store clothes."

Hastings glanced at Winifred, and Agatha fancied she understood what was in his mind.

"Some folks would sooner sleep in a hotel," he said, with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Then," said Sproatly, decisively, "they don't know very much. They're the kind of men who'd spend an hour every morning putting their clothes on, and they haven't found out that there's no comfort in any garment until you've had to sew two or three flour bag patches on to it. Then think of the splendid freeness of the other thing. You make your supper when you want, and just how you like it, when you put up in a bluff, and no tea tastes as good as the kind you drink with the wood smoke in it out of a blackened can. You can hear the little birch leaves and the grasses whispering about you when you lie down at night, and you drive on in the glorious freshness--just when it pleases you--when morning comes. Now the Company have the whole route and programme plotted out for me. They write me letters demanding most indelicately why I haven't done this and that."

Winifred looked at him sharply. "Civilisation," she said, "implies responsibility. You can't live just how you like without it being detrimental to the community."

"Oh yes," said Sproatly with a rueful gesture, "it implies no end of giving up. You have to fall into line, and that's why I kept outside it just as long as I could. I don't like standing in a rank, and," he glanced down at his clothing, "I've an inborn objection to wearing uniform."

Agatha laughed as she caught Hastings's eye. She fancied that Sproatly would be sorry for his candour afterwards, but she understood what he was feeling to some extent. It was a revolt against cramping customs and conventionalities, and she partly sympathised with it, though she knew that such revolts are dangerous. Even in the West, those who cannot lead must march in column with the rank and file or bear the consequences of their futile mutiny. It is a hard truth that no man can live as he pleases.

"Restraint," said Winifred, "is a wholesome thing, but it's one most of the men I have met are singularly deficient in. That's why they can't be left alone but must be driven, as they are, in companies. It's their own fault if they now and then find it a little humiliating."

There was a faint gleam in her eyes at which Sproatly apparently took warning, for he said no more upon that subject, and they talked about other matters until he took his departure an hour or two later. It was next afternoon when he appeared again, and Mrs. Hastings smiled at Agatha as he and Winifred drove away together.

"Thirty miles is a long way to drive in the frost. I suppose you have noticed that she calls him Jim?" she said. "Anyway, there's a good deal of very genuine ability in that young man. He isn't altogether wild."

"His appearance rather suggested it when I first met him," said Agatha with a laugh. "Was it a pose?"

"No," said her companion reflectively. "I think one could call it a reaction, and it's probable that some very worthy people in the Old Country are to blame for it. Sproatly is not the only young man who has suffered from having too many rules and conventions crammed down his throat. In fact, they're rather plentiful."

Agatha said nothing further, for the little girls appeared just then, and it was not until the next afternoon that she and Mrs. Hastings were alone together again. Then as they drove across the prairie wrapped in the heavy waggon robes her companion spoke of the business they had in hand.

"Gregory must keep those men," she said. "There's no doubt that Harry meant to do it, and it would be horribly unfair to turn them loose now when there's absolutely nothing going on. Besides, Tom Moran is a man I'm specially sorry for. As I told you, he left a young wife and a very little child behind him when he came out here."

"One would wonder why he did it," said Agatha. "He had to. There seems to be a notion in the Old Country that we earn our dollars easily, but it's very wrong. We'll take that man's case as an example. He has a little, desolate holding up in the bush of Ontario, a hole chopped out of the forest studded all over with sawn-off fir-stumps, with a little, two-roomed log shack on it. In all probability there isn't a settlement within two or three leagues of the spot. Now, as a rule, a place of that kind won't produce enough to keep a man for several years after he has partially cleared it, and unless he can earn something in the meanwhile he must give it up. Moran, it seems, got heavily into debt with the nearest storekeeper, and had to choose between selling the place up or coming out here where wages are higher. Well, you can probably imagine what it must be to the woman who stayed behind in the desolate bush, seeing nobody for weeks together, though I've no doubt that she'd bear it uncomplainingly believing that her husband would come back with enough to clear the debt."

Agatha could imagine it, and a certain indignation against Gregory crept into her heart. She had once liked to think of him as pitiful and chivalrous, and now, it seemed, he was quite willing that this woman should make her sacrifice in vain.

"But why have you taken the trouble to impress this on--me?" she asked.

Her companion smiled. "I want you to plead that woman's cause. Gregory may do what you ask him gracefully. That would be much the nicest way out of it."

"The nicest way?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Hastings, with a trace of dryness, "there is another one. Gregory is going to keep Tom Moran, anyway. Harry has one or two friends in this neighbourhood who feel it more or less of an obligation on them to maintain his credit."

Agatha felt the blood rise to her face, but it was not her companion she was angry with. It was an unpleasant thing to admit, but she fancied that Gregory might yield to judicious pressure when he would not be influenced by either compassion or a sense of equity. It also flashed upon her that had Mrs. Hastings believed that she still retained any tenderness for the man she would not have spoken as she had done. The whole situation was horribly embarrassing, but there was courage in her.

"Well," she said simply, "I will speak to him."

They said nothing more until they approached the Range, and as they drove by the outbuildings Agatha glanced about her curiously. It occurred to her that the homestead did not look quite the same as it had done when Wyllard had been there. A waggon stood near the strawpile without one wheel. A door of the barn hung awkwardly open in a manner which suggested that it needed mending, and the snow had blown inside the building. There was a gap in the side of one sod and pole structure which should evidently have been repaired, and all this and several other things she noticed jarred upon her. They suggested slackness and indifference. Then she saw Mrs. Hastings purse her lips up.

"There is a change in the place already," she said.

They got down in another minute or two, and when they entered the house the grey-haired Swedish woman greeted them moodily. She seemed to notice the glance Mrs. Hastings cast around her, and her manner became deprecatory.

"I can't keep things straight now. It is not the same," she said.

Mrs. Hastings asked if Hawtrey was in, and hearing that he was turned to Agatha. "Go along and talk to him. I've something to say to Mrs. Nansen," she said.