Chapter 12

There was, mercifully, very little time left for us before the train came in. We kept our masks on, and talked only of every-day things, about the receipt for the ranch taxes and what steers Whinnie should "finish" and the new granary roof and the fire-lines about the haystacks. Without quite knowing it, when the train pulled in, I put my arm through my husband's--and for the second time that evening he turned sharply and inspected my face. I felt as though I wanted to hold him back, to hold him back from something unescapable but tragically momentous. I think he felt sorry for me. At any rate, after he had swung his suit-case up on the car-platform, he turned and kissed me good-by. But it was the sort of kiss one gets at funerals. It left me standing there watching the tail-lights blink off down the track, as desolate as though I had been left alone on the deadest promontory of the deadest planet lost in space. I stood there until the lights were gone. I stood there until the platform was empty again and my car was the only car left along the hard-packed cinders. So I climbed into the driving-seat, and pulled on my gauntlets, and headed for home....

Back at Casa Grande I found Dinkie and Whinnie beside the bunk-house stove, struggling companionably through the opening chapters of _Treasure Island_. My boy smiled up at me, for a moment, but his mind, I could see, was intent on the page along which Whinnie's stubbled finger was crawling like a plowshare beside each furrow of text. He was in the South Pacific, a thousand miles away from me. In my own house Struthers was putting a petulant-voiced Poppsy to bed, and Gershom, up in his room, was making extraordinary smells at his chemistry experiments. Susie I found curled comfortably up in front of the fire, idling over my first volume of _Jean Christophe_.

She read three sentences aloud as I sat down beside her. "How happy he is! He is made to be happy!...Life will soon see to it that he is brought to reason."

She seemed to expect some comment from me, but I found myself with nothing to say. In fact, we both sat there for a long time, staring in silence at the fire.

"Why do you live with a man you don't love?" she suddenly asked out of the utter stillness.

It startled me, that question. It also embarrassed me, for I could feel my color mount as Susie's lapis-lazuli eyes rested on my face.

"What makes you think I don't love him?" I countered, reminding myself that Susie, after all, was still a girl in her teens.

"It's not a matter of thinking," was Susie's quiet retort. "I _know_ you don't."

"Then I wish I could be equally certain," I said with a defensive stiffening of the lines of dignity.

But Susie smiled rather wearily at my forlorn little parade of _hauteur_. Then she looked at the fire.

"It's hell, isn't it, being a woman?" she finally observed, unconsciously paraphrasing a much older philosopher.

"Sometimes," I admitted.

"I don't see why you stand it," was her next meditative shaft in my direction.

"What would you do about it?" I guardedly inquired.

Susie's face took on one of its intent looks. She was only in her teens, but life, after all, hadn't dealt over-lightly with her. She impressed me, at the moment, as a secretly ardent young person whose hard-glazed little body might be a crucible of incandescent though invisible emotions.

"What would you do about it?" I repeated, wondering what gave some persons the royal right of doing the questionable and making it seem unquestionable.

"_Live!_" said Susie with quite unlooked-for emphasis. "_Live_--whatever it costs!"

"Wouldn't you regard this as living?" I asked, after a moment of thought.

"Not as you ought to be," averred Susie.

"Why not?" I parried.

Susie sighed. She began to see that it was beyond argument, I suppose. Then she too had her period of silence.

"But what are you getting out of it?" she finally demanded. "What is going to happen? What ever _has_ happened?"

"To whom?" I asked, resenting the unconscious cruelty of her questioning.

"To you," was the reply of the hard-glazed young hedonist confronting me.

"Are you flattering me with the inference that I was cut out for better things?" I interrogated as my gaze met Susie's. It was her turn to color up a bit. Then she sighed again, and shook her head.

"I don't suppose it's doing either of us one earthly bit of good," she said with a listless small smile of atonement. "And I'm sorry."

So we let the skeletons stalk away from our pleasant fireside and secrete themselves in their customary closets of silence.

But I've been thinking a good deal about that question of Susie's. What _has_ happened to me, out here on the prairie? What has indeed come into my life?...

I married young and put a stop to those romantic adventurings which enrich the lives of most girls and enlighten the days of many women. I married a man and lived with him in a prairie shack, and sewed and baked for him, and built a new home and lost it, and began over again. I had children, and saw one of them die, and felt my girlhood slip away, and sold butter and eggs, and loved the man of my choice and cleaved to him and planned for my children, until I saw the man of my choice love another woman. And still I clung to my sparless hulk of a home, hoping to hold close about me the children I had brought into the world and would some day lose again to the world. And that was all. That was everything. It is true, nothing much has ever happened to me....

But I stop, to think this over. If these are the small things, then what are the big things of life? What is it that other women get? I have sung and been happy; I have known great joy and walked big with Hope. I have loved and been loved. I have known sorrow, and I have known birth, and I have sat face to face with death. I have, after all, pretty well run the whole gamut, without perhaps realizing it. For these, after all, are the big things, the elemental things, of life. They are the basic things which leave scant room for the momentary fripperies and the hand-made ornaments of existence....

Heigho! I seem to grow into a melancholy Jacques with the advancing years. That's the way of life, I suppose. But I've no intention of throwing up the sponge. If I can no longer get as much fun out of the game as I want, I can at least watch my offspring taking their joy out of it. God be thanked for giving us our children! We can still rest our tired old eyes on them, just as the polisher of precious stones used to keep an emerald in front of him, to relieve his strained vision by gazing at its soft and soothing greenness.

I have just crept in to take a look at my precious Dinkie, fast asleep in the old cast-iron crib that is growing so small for him he has to lie catercornered on his mattress. He seemed so big, stretched out there, that he frightened me with the thought he couldn't be a child much longer. There are no babies left now in my home circle. And I still have a shamefaced sort of hankering to hold a baby in my arms again!

_Wednesday the Thirty-First_

Susie has promised to stay with us until after Christmas. And the holidays, I realize, are only a few weeks away. Struthers is knitting a sweater of flaming red and rather grimly acknowledged, when I pinned her down, that it was for Whinstane Sandy. There was a snow-flurry Sunday, and Gershom took Susie riding in the old cutter, scratching grittily along the half-covered trails but apparently enjoying it. My poor little Poppsy, who rather idolizes Gershom, is transparently jealous of his attentions to Susie. Yet Gershom, I know, is nice to Susie and nothing more. He is still my loyal but carefully restrained knight. It's a shame, I suppose, to bobweasel him the way I occasionally do. But I can't quite help it. His goody-goodiness is as provocative to my baser nature as a red flag to an Andulasian bull. And a woman who was once reckoned as a heart-breaker has to keep her hand in with _something_. I've got to convince myself that the last shot hasn't gone from the locker which Duncan Argyll McKail once rifled. I spoiled Gershom's supper for him the other night by asking what it was made some people have such a mysterious influence over other people. And I caught him up short, last Sunday morning, when he tried to argue that I was a sort of paragon in petticoats.

"Don't you run away with the idea I'm that kind of an angel," I promptly assured him. "I'm an outlaw, from saddle to sougan, and I can buck like a bear fightin' bees. I'm a she-devil crow-hopping around in skirts. And I could bu'st every commandment slap-bang across my knee, once I got started, and leave a trail of crime across the fair face of nature that would make an old Bow-Gun vaquero's back-hair stand up. I'm just a woman, Gershom, a little lonely and a little loony, and there's so much backed-up bad in me that once the dam gives way there'll be a hell-roaring old whoop-up along these dusty old trails!"

Gershom turned white.

"But there's your little ones to think of," he quaveringly reminded me.

"Yes, there's my little ones to think of," I echoed, wondering where I'd heard that familiar old refrain before. My bark, after all, is much worse than my bite. About all I can do is take things out in talk. I'm only a faded beauty, brooding over my antique adventures as a heart-breaker. But I know of one heart I'd still like to break--if I had the power. No; not break; but bend up to the cracking point!

_Monday the Nineteenth_

How Time takes wing for the busy! It's only six days to Christmas and I've still my box to get off for Olga and her children. We've sent to Peter some really charming snap-shots of the children, which Susie took. The general effect of one, I must acknowledge, is seriously damaged by the presence of their Mummy.

Dinky-Dunk doubts if he'll be able to get home for the holidays. But I sent him a box, on Saturday, made up of those things which he likes best to eat and a set of the children's pictures, nicely mounted. I've also had Dinkie and Poppsy write a long letter to their dad, a task which they performed with more constraint than I had anticipated. I had my own difficulties, along the same line, for I had taken a photograph of poor little Pee-Wee's grave with a snow-drift across one end of it, and had written on the bottom of the mounting-card: "_We must remember._" But as I stood studying this, before putting it in next to Poppsy's huge Christmas-card gay with powdered mica I felt a foolish tear or two run down my cheek. And I realized it would never do to cloud my Dinky-Dunk's day with memories which might not be altogether happy. So I've kept the picture of the little white-fenced bed with the white snow-drift across its foot....

Susie is in bed with a bad cold, which she caught studying astronomy with Gershom. Poppsy was not in the least put out when she watched me preparing a mustard-plaster for the invalid. My daughter, I am persuaded, has a revived faith in the operation of retributive justice. But I hope Susie is better by the holiday. Whinnie has the Christmas Tree hidden away in the stable, and already a number of mysterious parcels have arrived at Casa Grande. Bud Teetzel very gallantly sent me over a huge turkey, an eighteen-pounder, and to-morrow I have to go into Buckhorn for my mail-order shipments. We have decorated the house with a whole box of holly from Victoria and I've hung a sprig of mistletoe in the living-room doorway. The children, of course, are on tiptoe with expectation. But I can't escape the impression that I'm merely acting a part, that I'm a Pagliacci in petticoats. Heaven knows I clown enough; no one can accuse me of not going through the gestures. But it seems like fox-trotting along the deck of a sinking ship.

I stood under the mistletoe, this morning, and dared Gershom to kiss me. He turned quite white and made for the door. But I caught him by the coat, like Potiphar's wife, and pulled him back to the authorizing berry-sprig and gave him a brazen big smack on the cheek-bone. He turned a sunset pink, at that, and marched out of the room without saying a word. But he was shaking his head as he went, at my shamelessness, I suppose. Poor old Gershom! I wish there were more men in the world like him. The other day Susie intimated that he was too homosexual and that it was the polygamous wretches who really kept the world going. But I refuse to subscribe to that sophomoric philosophy of hers which would divide the race into fools and knaves. "It's safer being sane than mad; it's better being good than bad!" as Robert remarked. And I know at least one strong man who is not bad; and one bad man who is not strong.

_Tuesday the Twenty-Seventh_

The great Day has come and gone. And I'm not sorry. There was a cloud over my heart that kept me from getting the happiness out of it I ought. I hoped we would hear from Peter, but for the first time in history he overlooked us.

Dinky-Dunk, as he had warned us, could not get home for the holidays. But he surprised me by sending a really wonderful box for the kiddies, and even a gorgeous silver-mounted collar for Scotty. Susie is up again, but she is still feeling a bit listless. I heard Gershom informing her to-night that her blood travels at the rate of seven miles per hour and that if all the energy of Niagara Falls were utilized it could supply the world with seven million horse-power. I do wish Gershom would get over trying to pat the world on the head, instead of shaking hands with it! I'm afraid I'm losing my lilt. I can't understand why I should keep feeling as blue as indigo. I am a well of acid and a little sister to the crab-apple. I think I'll make Susie come down so we can humanize ourselves with a little music. For I feel like a Marie Bashkirtseff with a bilious attack....

Whinstane Sandy has just come in with Peter's box, two days late. I felt sure that Peter would not utterly forget us. There is still a great deal of shouting down in the kitchen, where that most miraculous of boxes has been unpacked. As for myself, I've had a hankering to be alone, to think things over. But my meditations don't seem to get me anywhere.... Dinkie has just come up to show me his brand-new bridle for Buntie. It is a magnificent bridle, as shiny and jingly as any lad could desire. I tried to get him to put it down, so that I could draw him over close to me and talk to him. But Dinkie is too excited for any such demonstration. He's beginning, I'm afraid, to consider emotion a bit unmanly. He seems to be losing his craving to be petted and pampered. There are times, I can see, when he desires his fence-lines to be respected.

_Sunday the Twenty-Ninth_

Nearly six weeks, I notice, have slipped by. For a month and a half, apparently, the impulse to air my troubles went hibernating with the bears. Yet it has been a mild winter, so far, with very little snow and a great deal of sunshine--a great deal of sunshine which doesn't elate me as it ought. I can't remember who it was said a happy people has no history. But that's not true of a happy woman. It's when her heart is full that she makes herself heard, that she sings like a lark to the world. When she's wretched, she retires with her grief....

I haven't been altogether wretched, it's true, just as I haven't been altogether hilarious, but it disturbs me to find that for a month and a half I haven't written a line in this, the mottled old book of my life. It's not that the last month or two has been empty, for no months are really empty. They have to be filled with something. But there are times, I suppose, when lives lie fallow, the same as fields lie fallow, times when the days drag like harrow-teeth across the perplexed loam of our soul and nothing comes of it at all. Not, I repeat, that I have been momentously unhappy. It's more that a sort of sterilizing indifferency took possession of me and made the little ups and downs of existence as unworthy of record as the ups and downs of the waves on the deadest shores of the Dead Sea. It's not that I'm idle, and it's not that I'm old, and it's not that there's anything wrong with this disappointingly healthy body of mine. But I rather think I need a change of some kind. I even envy Susie, who has ambled on to the Coast and is staying with the Lougheeds in Victoria, playing golf and picking winter roses and writing back about her trips up Vancouver Island and her approaching journey down into California.

"What do we know of the New World," she parodied in her last letter that came to me, "who only the old East know?" Then she goes on to say: "I'm just back from a West Coast trip on the roly-poly _Maquinna_ and if my thoughts go wobbly and my hand goes crooked it's because my head is so prodigiously full of

SEALS SALMON SUNSETS STARS SURF SOLANDER ISLAND SIWASHES SAGHALIE LAMONTIS SKOOKUM CHUCK SEA-LIONS

[Transcriber's note: In original, initial "S" was one very large decorative letter, 10 letter-heights tall.]

and alas, also _Seasickness_, that I can't think straight!"

Susie's soul, apparently, has had the dry-shampoo it was in need of. But as for me, I'm like an old horse-shoe with its calks worn off. The Master-Blacksmith of Life should poke me deep into His fires and fling me on His anvil and make me over!

I've been worrying about my Dinkie. It's all so trivial, in a way, and yet I can't persuade myself it isn't also tragic. He told Susie, before she left, that he was quite willing to go to bed a little earlier one night, because then "he could dream about Doreen." And I noticed, not long ago, that instead of taking just _one_ of our Newton Pippins to school with him, he had formed the habit of taking _two_. On making investigation, I discovered that this second apple ultimately and invariably found its way into the hands of Mistress Doreen O'Lone. And last week Dinkie autocratically commanded Whinstane Sandy to hitch Mudski up in the old cutter, to go sleigh-riding with the lady of his favor to the Teetzels' taffy-pull. Dinkie's mother was not consulted in the matter--and that is the disturbing feature of it all. I can't help remembering what Duncan once said about my boy growing out of my reach. If I ever lost my Dinkie I would indeed be alone, terribly and hopelessly alone.

_Wednesday the Eighth_

Dinkie, who has been disturbing me the last few days by going about with an air of suppressed excitement, brought my anxiety to a head yesterday by staring into my face and then saying:

"Mummy, I've got a secret!"

"What secret?" I asked, doing my best to appear indifferent.

But Dinkie was not to be trapped.

"It wouldn't be a secret, if I told you," he sagaciously explained.

I studied my child with what was supposed to be a reproving eye.

"You mean you can't even tell your own Mummy?" I demanded.

He shook his head, in solemn negation.

"But can you, some day?" I pursued.

He thought this over.

"Yes, some day," he acknowledged, squeezing my knee.

"How long will I have to wait?" I asked, wondering what could bring such a rhapsodic light into his hazel-specked eye. I thought, of course, of Doreen O'Lone. And I wished the O'Lones would follow in the footsteps of so many other successful ranchers and trek off to California. Then, as I sat studying Dinkie, I countermanded that wish. For its fulfillment would bring loneliness to the heart of my laddie--and loneliness is hell! So, instead, I struggled as best I could to banish all thought of the matter from my mind. But it was only half a success. I remembered that Gershom himself had been going about as abstracted as an ant-eater and as gloomy as a crow, during the last week; and I kept sniffing something unpropitious up-wind. I even hoped that Dinkie would return to the subject, as children with a secret have the habit of doing. But he has been as tight-lipped on the matter as his reticent old dad might have been.

_Wednesday the Fifteenth_

I got an altogether unlooked-for Valentine yesterday. It was a brief but a significant letter from Dinky-Dunk, telling me that he had "taken over" the Goodhue house in Mount Royal and asking me if I intended to be its mistress. He has bought the house, apparently, completely furnished and is getting ready to move into it the first week in March.

The whole thing has rather taken my breath away. I don't object to an ultimatum, but I do dislike to have it come like a bolt from the blue. I have arrived at my Rubicon, all right, and about everything that's left of my life, I suppose, will hang on my decision. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry, to be horrified or hilarious. At one moment I have a tendency to emulate Marguerite doing the Jewel-Song in _Faust_. "This isn't _me_! This isn't _me_!" I keep protesting to myself. But Marguerite, I know, would never be so ungrammatical. And then I begin to foresee difficulties. The mere thought of leaving Casa Grande tears my heart. When we go away, as that wise man of Paris once said, we die a little. This will always seem my home. I could never forsake it utterly. I dread to forsake it for even a portion of each year. I am a part of the prairie, now, and I could never be entirely happy away from it. And to accept that challenge--for however one may look at it, it remains a challenge--and go to the new home in Calgary would surely be another concession. And I have been conceding, conceding, for the sake of my children. How much more can I concede?

Yet, when all is said and done, I am one of a family. I am not a free agent. I am chained to the oar for life. When we link up with the race we have more than the little ring of our own Ego to remember. It is not, as Dinky-Dunk once pointed out to me, a good thing to get "Indianized." We have our community obligations and they must be faced. The children, undoubtedly, would have advantages in the city. And to find my family reunited would be "_le desir de paraitre_." But I can't help remembering how much there is to remember. I'm humbler now, it's true, than I once was. I no longer say "One side, please!" to life, while life, like old Major Elmes on Murray Hill, declines to vary its course for one small and piping voice. Instead of getting gangway, I find, I'm apt to get an obliterating thump on the spine. Heaven knows, I want to do the right thing. But the issue seems so hopelessly tangled. I have brooded over it and I have even prayed over it. But it all seems to come to nothing. I sometimes nurse a ghostly sort of hope that it may be taken out of my hands, that some power outside myself may intervene to decide. For it impresses me as ominous that I should be able to hesitate at such a time, when a woman, for once in her life, should know her own mind, should see her own fixed goal and fight her way to it. I've been wondering if I haven't ebbed away into that half-warm impersonality which used to impress me as the last stage in moral decay.