Part 17

Poverty, sociologists tell us, is the mother of crime, and as those hard times subsequently influenced the settlers in their attitude towards Helen, they are surely worthy of mention. To begin, the country was practically bankrupt. The frost of the preceding fall had left the wheat useless, and but for the fact that the provincial government had imported and distributed free seed, not an acre of grain would have been sown that year. The seriousness of the crisis may be gauged by the legislature's further action in enacting an exemption law that practically excluded all of a farmer's goods and chattels from legal execution. This was good, but in that it was not, nor could be made retroactive, it benefited only the new-comers and left the pioneers, who had spent their little all opening up the country, still liable to foreclosure and execution.

On the northern settlers times had borne particularly hard. During boom years all had assumed loan indebtedness, and whereas creditors had bided patiently successive lean seasons on the chance of a branch railroad and bumper crop, now that the country's credit, its very future was trembling in the balance; implement-men and store-keepers raced with twenty-per-cent. Shylocks to grab what they could from the wreck. That spring the sheriff of Brandon was the busiest man in the country-side. He and his deputies sowed summonses, executions, foreclosures broadcast over the land. Wolves of the law, they harried the farmers till the optimism of the brilliant emigration pamphlets was swamped, submerged beneath inky pessimism. Small wonder that--coupled with idleness, breeder of mischief, in the slack season that Glaves feared between seeding and haying--small wonder that some of the rancor bred by hard conditions should be vented upon Helen.

She may be said to have stood in an uncomfortable position as lightning conductor between this cloud of spleen and the earth, upon which it should have properly been discharged. And looking back, one may see the storm gathering over her fair head, observing in its approach all of the natural phenomena: first the cold wind, social disfavor, the whispers; next, heavy drops thudding in the dust, the snubs and slights; lastly, thunder, lightning, rain, downright persecution.

The whispers, of course, she did not hear, but she could not overlook the difference in trail greetings, which were either far too warm or much too cool, according to the years and disposition of the greeter. Coldness was endurable, but the rude stares, conscious laughter of the younger boors often caused her to fly the hot colors of angry shame. Yet even this hurt less than the sudden, shy suspicion of her pupils. Whereas they were wont to hang upon her skirts, they now held aloof in play hours, and ran straight home from school.

"Mother says I'm not to walk with you any more," one tot explained her haste. How that stung! Having only the faintest of ideas, little more than a suspicion of the strength and nature of this uncomfortable prejudice, she resented it as bitter injustice, and held a proud head until a thing happened that almost broke her spirit.

Of all the settler women, Ruth Murchison was the one girl with whom Helen had been, or could be, on anything like terms of intimacy. Quiet and thoughtful, Ruth had gone through the English common schools, and had taken the Junior Oxford Examination, to which passable education a taste for good reading had formed a further bond. Wherefore Helen was delighted when, one day, news drifted into the post-office that Ruth was to be married to the Probationer, the young minister who preached Merrill's funeral sermon.

Borrowing a beast from Glaves, she rode north one evening to offer congratulations, and as the Murchisons lived several miles north of Silver Creek Valley, night fell while she still lacked half a mile of the homestead. From that distance the windows' yellow blaze advised of fuss and busy preparation. Drawing nearer, voices, laughter, the whir of an egg-beater, clatter of cooking-gear came down the trail merrily freighting the dusk. Infected by the cheer, she gave a shrill halloa, spurred to a gallop, and drew in at the door with a clatter of hoofs.

"Ruth! Oh, Ruth!" she called. "Ruth-y!"

Instantly the voices hushed, then, after an uncomfortable pause, she heard Mrs. Murchison say, in thin, constrained tones, "Mrs. Carter is out there, father."

Followed a shuffling, and the door opened revealing Murchison framed in yellow light. Stout, robust, ruddy, with that mottled-beef English complexion, he came of that stout yeoman stock whose twanging long-bows sounded France's knell at Crecy and Poitiers, of that rich blood the slow drainage of which to her colonies has left England flabby, ensemic, flaccid. He had not wished to leave, but the motherland had become industrial without further place for her yeoman. Over fields that were enriched by the tilth of thirty Murchison generations, a thousand factories were depositing soot and blighting acids. American wheat and beeves had wiped out profits, while enormous rents ate up the farmer's substance. So Murchison, England's best, had become partner in exile with the remittance-men, her worst. Undoubtedly, there was no symptom of remittance weakness in the scowl he turned on Helen.

Behind him Helen could see Ruth, red and embarrassed, hanging her head over the egg-beater. A half-dozen girls and neighboring women, who had come in to help in the baking and brewing, were exchanging meaning glances across the table.

"Ruth? She's well," Murchison answered her question.

She knew what to expect now, but nerved herself to face the situation. "Can't I see her?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because she don't run with your kind."

"Oh, Mr. Murchison!"

He felt the heart sickness, yet glowered relentlessly, for it had been the habit of his forebears to thrash their women into good behavior. He itched to do it now for the good of her soul, but, lacking the power, he growled:

"If you don't like it--keep better company."

If he had been alone, she would undoubtedly have challenged his reproach and, while clearing herself in his eyes, have turned away future trouble. But a titter from within fired her pride. "Very well, please give her my congratulations." And turning she rode away.

Good-hearted as rough, Murchison stared after, stricken with sudden compunction. He knew that she must have intended to stay the night, and here she was a timorous woman riding out into the darkness. "Here!" he shouted. "Come back!"

But she held on, eyes snapping, cheeks aflame, throat convulsed under the strain of suppressing imminent hysteria. Beyond earshot she broke down, venting her injured loneliness in broken speech between bursts of sobbing. "They hate--me. Condemn me--because--my husband left me. It wasn't my--fault--that is, altogether." She hastily corrected herself. "Of course--I failed him. But I was--sorry--would have done better--if he had--given me a chance. He's so stern--and stiff--" She would not even let this undoubted truth pass unmodified. "But then--he thought I didn't--love him. Perhaps I didn't--then. I was a little fool. But I do! I do!" She stretched wild arms to the darkness. "I do! I do! I do!" But the velvet night returned nothing to her embrace and she collapsed, sobbing, upon the pony's neck. Still the cry did her good, tided over hysteria, composed and quieted her so that she was able to meet the trustee's glance of spectacled inquiry as she entered the cabin.

Kindliness as well as curiosity inhered in his glance, for, besides the cash and educational prestige which she had brought to his cabin, Jimmy had come to like her for herself. The frost and grizzle of fifty winters thawed under his smile as he threw a Winnipeg paper across the table. "Catch! Just kem in. Yes, there's a story 'bout him. Now, don't eat it."

Metaphorically, she did, indeed, devour the article, and while she read the trustee watched with something of puzzled astonishment the lovely tide that flowed out from the lace at her neck, and drowned her pale creams to the roots of her hair. He had ample opportunity for study as the article was long. Just then Carter's line, with its promise of competition, focussed the interest of the entire province, and some enterprising scribe had risen to the opportunity afforded by a visit west of the general manager of the trunk line, to interview him upon the probable action of his road in proceedings to condemn a crossing of its right of way. Time, however, had not abated one iota of the manager's sphinx like quality. While affable, he had declined to discuss railroad politics, remarking that his company did not "cross bridges before they were built." Interviewed in his turn upon the significance of the aforesaid remark, Carter had ventured the opinion that the trunk-line people would not oppose the crossing, and thereby had provoked a flaming editorial upon his artlessness.

"If the people behind Mr. Carter imagine that the greediest monopoly in history will loose its grip on this province till the law's crowbar pries off its fingers one by one, they are mightily mistaken," the editor hotly declared. "Forewarned is forearmed, and we hereby present them, gratis, with this piece of information--while they are running their grades in peaceful confidence that will be most appropriate in the innocent age when lion and lamb lie down together, the monopoly is gathering men and means, preparing to crush their enterprise by force should the crooked enginery of the law fail its purpose. Why else have five hundred extra men been distributed among the sections on either side of the proposed crossing? Why does a gravel-train stand there permanently across the proposed right of way? Soon Mr. Carter will receive unmistakable answer to these questions."

"He's dead right there, that editor man," the trustee said when, all rosy red, Helen looked up from her reading. "Old Brass-Bowels was born with a nateral insight into the nater of a dead cinch."

"But won't the law support my"--she paused, then proudly finished--"my husband? Can't he compel a crossing?"

"The law?" Sniffing, Jimmy indicated the legal patchwork on the wall with a comprehensive sweep of his pipe. "The law said as I was to pay them, but did I? Humph!"

"But they'll hardly dare to fly in the face of the province? Public opinion is a great moral force." She quoted a sentence from the editorial with gusto.

"Yes, but 'tain't much of a club. Did you ever see one of my hawgs stan' aside, even when he was full, to let another have a go at the trough? Not till I hit him on the snout. Well, they ain't agoin' to cross the trunk line these two years, an' for my part I don't care if they never cross."

"Why?" Her eyes dilated widely. "Wouldn't a competing line benefit you--all of the province?"

Nodding, he regarded her from half-shut eyes. "Oh, I ain't expecting to walk on gold this side o' the pearly gates. As for my reasons, they ain't a mile away from here. I'm not wishing too much success for a man that deserts his wife."

Touched and very much flushed as to the face by his genuine, if crabbed sympathy, the Reasons yet shook her head and spoke up for the recreant husband stoutly as she had defended him against herself. She made, however, small headway against his obduracy.

"Well, that's the way I see it. By-the-way," he added, heading off a disposition for further argument, "did you see the evangelist? Pitched his tent over by Flynn's. You want to go. Beats a three-ring circus when old man Cummings hits up to his gait."

"Jimmy! Jimmy!" His wife looked up from her ironing; then daunted, perhaps, by his twinkle, she addressed Helen. "He hadn't orter talk that away, my dear. If Mr. Cummings does go on the rampage a bit when he gets het up, at least he's sincere. As for him--" She turned a severe eye on her husband. "We'll get him yet."

"Yes, I see myself. Her idea of heaven"--he shrugged at the ironing-board--"is an eternal class-meeting with everybody giving their experience--love-feast she calls it. I like something solider. Give me plenty to eat, a pipe by a warm fire, an' something to read, an' I'll sign away my harp an' crown." Ignoring his better-half's remark that he would not lack the fire, he finished: "She's going. Wouldn't miss a meeting. Kedn't keep her away with a club. So if you'd alike to see some fun--"

"If 'twas jes' out of curiosity I'd ask her to stay at home," his wife interrupted. "But she's not that kind, an' I'll be glad to take her."

"If you will?" Helen assented, and so, returning to the analogy, placed herself directly beneath the leaden belly of the lowering storm.

*XXII*

*DENUNCIATION*

A molten sun was smouldering in the ashes of day when, the following evening, Helen with Mrs. Glaves, drove up to the gospel-tent. It still lacked half an hour of meeting-time, so, while her companion joined the early arrivals who were passing time by holding a service of song inside, Helen remained in the buckboard and watched the sunset, observed herself by a group of remittance-men and a scattering of settler youths who sprawled near by on the grass.

Enthralled, she scarcely saw them; had eyes only for the ruby sun that stained the prairies with amber incandescences, the ribbed glories of the fiery cloud pillars that seemed to uphold the darkling vault above. As the orb slid into his blankets of rose and gold, shy stars peeped down at the violet shadows that crawled slowly up the slopes and knolls; over all fell the hush of evening.

It was one of the moments when the Riddle of Infinity, Puzzles of Time, Space, Eternity appear as concrete though unthinkable realities; weigh down and oppress the soul with a sense of its insignificance. Against the black-blue vault the stars loomed as worlds; she could see beyond, around them. Through vast voids planets were rushing on their courses; suns with attendant systems swung on measured arcs obedient to--what? ... A thin minor, querulous plaint stole out on the hush:

"Poor crawling Worm of Earth, A Child of Sin am I--"

It was an honest attempt at the riddle, but its incongruity, futile insufficiency caused her to shrug with sudden annoyance. She wondered if, somewhere in planetary space, other "pinches of sentient dust" were equally afflicted with a sense of their central importance in the scheme of things. The apologetic whine spoiled the sunset; she impatiently turned to watch the arrivals--the wagons, buck-boards, horsemen--that were streaming in on every trail.

"How are you, Mrs. Carter?"

It was Danvers, Molyneux's old pupil. An honest lad and merry, she always liked him, and now made him welcome to the seat beside her, and laughed at his fire of chaff. Indicating Cummings, whose ovine expression had sustained no diminution since the day he bearded the general manager, he remarked: "He's great, Mrs. Carter; puts it all over Henry Irving. And there's the sky pilot! What a Jovelike port!"

There was, of course, little wit and less humor in his chaff, but his intentions were honorable, so, ignoring the sour looks of the arriving settlers, she gave him smiling attention up to the moment they entered the tent together, and so prepared the way for what followed. For though, going in, she left levity without, her modest and devout bearing could not mitigate her offence in allying herself with the English Ishmael. It was aggravated, moreover, by her remaining with him in close proximity to the remittance crowd on the back benches. Thereafter nothing could save her; she remained a target for sour glances throughout the service.

This was on the usual pattern--rousing hymns, prayer, testimony, and exhortation--then when groans and ejaculations testified to the spiritual temperature, the evangelist, a stout man of bull-like build, proceeded to cut off yards of the "undying worm," and to measure bushels of the "fire that quencheth not" for the portion of such as refused to view the problems of Infinity through aught but his own wildly gleaming spectacles. His discourse, indeed, bristled with those cant terms which, while entirely devoid of meaning, are still eminently conducive of religious hysteria, and his efforts were the more successful because of the absence of the Probationer, a thoughtful young fellow whose rare common-sense could be depended upon to prevent religious emotion from degenerating into epilepsy.

Lacking his wholesome presence, the evangelist paced the platform under the yellow lantern-light, stretching long, black arms, hovering over the people like some huge, dark bird as he pleaded, threatened, thundered, launching his fiery periods on a groaning wave of "amens" and "hallelujahs." As he went on, painting heaven and hell into his lurid scheme of things, sighs and exclamations grew in volume, flooding feeling pulsed through the audience, wild settler youths, who had come to scoff, exchanged uneasy glances on the back benches, sure sign of a coming stampede.

This was the psychological moment, and, skilled in his trade, the revivalist pounced upon it. Stilling the groaning chorus with upheld hand, he solemnly invited all who were not _against_ the Lord Jesus to stand, an old revival trick and one which now, as always, turned. For, as before said, the plains were not yet infected with the leprosy of agnosticism, and, Episcopalians to a man, even the Englishmen were not willing to pose as the open enemies of God.

Once standing and pilloried in the public eye, it was but a question of minutes until the back benches began to yield up penitents. One by one the settler youths were gathered into the mourning bench, until at last Helen stood alone with the Englishmen.

"Come ye! Come ye to the Lord!" The preacher pleaded, but, haughty and coldly constrained, the remittance-men ignored the invitation; and so, for the space of a thunderous hymn of praise, gnostic civilization and the fervid frontier faced each other across the middle benches. From that dramatic setting anything might come. Moment, feeling, atmosphere, all pointed to the event that came to pass as the hymn died.

Leaping upon a bench, and so adding its height to unusual tallness, a woman pointed a warning hand at the unbelievers. Thin, family-worn, and naturally cadaverously yellow, she was now flushed with the fever of delirium. "In that day," she screeched, "the Tares shall be separated from the Wheat and cast with the grass into the oven!" Then, while her finger indicated man after man, she raised the grewsome hymn:

"'I heard the Sinners Wailing, Wailing, Wailing, I heard the Sinners Wailing on that Great Day!'"

Travelling around the benches, her skinny finger finally fastened on Helen, and, as the lugubrious refrain came to an end, she burst forth in tremendous paraphrase: "Beware ye of the Scarlet Woman! Avoid ye, for her portals lead down to Death; her feet take hold of Hell!"

The silence of paralysis followed. So still it was that a mosquito's thin whine sounded through the tent, the tinkle of a cow-bell came in from far pastures, a dog could be heard barking a long way off. Swinging from the tent-pole, a circle of lanterns lit dark, flushed faces, and thus, for the space of a long breath, Helen faced the virago, the one glowering, malignant, the other pale with astonishment, mutely indignant. She was not confused. On the contrary, thought and vision were surprisingly clear; she noted Mrs. Glaves's shocked look, the vindictive settler faces, the Englishmen's blank expressions.

"We had better go. May I drive home, Mrs. Carter?" Danvers, the witless, the foolish, rose to the situation.

Low-pitched, his voice yet carried to every ear, as did her clear reply:

"After the service is over."

It was defiance as well as answer, and as she threw it in the lowering face of the congregation, her glance fixed on the evangelist who, till then, had stood, mouth open, hand arrested midway of a gesture, a bearded, spectacled effigy of ridiculous surprise. Starting under her pale scorn, he flushed, looked for a second through shining, bewildered glasses, then strode forward and seized the virago's arm.

"Sister, sister! Judge not that ye be not judged!" Then, himself again, he swept a pudgy hand over the benches. "Sit down, all! Brother Cummings will lead in prayer."

It mercifully happens that sudden calamity carries its own anaesthetic in that it blinds, confuses, destroys feeling, numbs the faculties that ought to register its importance. Under Helen's unnatural calmness she was dimly conscious of a sick excitement, but this was unrelated with her thought. She saw and sensed as usual; was aware of curious backward glances, the sympathy of the Englishmen at her side; heard every word of Cummings's sputtering prayer, the following hymn and benediction; only her mind refused commerce with these things. Divorced from the present, it juggled the terms of an equation in that day's lesson up to the moment that the remittance-men came crowding about Danvers' rig after the meeting.

Aside from their looseness and general inefficiency, the lads were brave enough, and though some of them had won or lost bets on her reputation, winners were no more eager than losers to avenge the insult that had been provoked by her association with themselves.

"Just say the word, Mrs. Carter," Danvers pleaded, "and we'll lick the crowd."

"And put a head on the preacher," young Poole added, sinfully licking his chops.

From the darkness that enveloped the press of rigs and wagons rose jeering voices, sneers, laughter, the conscious cackle of scandal. Several times she heard her own name. There was provocation and to spare, but though a word would have started a racial riot, she desired only solitude, to flutter home like a wounded bird to its nest.

"No, no!" she answered them. "Take me home! Only take me home!"

Arrived there, she flew to her own room leaving Danvers to enlighten the trustee. Lying face down on her bed, she heard the rumble of their conversation, Jimmy's violent reflections upon revivals particular and general, his wife's whimpering protests when she returned. His growl extended far into the night, and when it was finally extinguished by a robust snoring, the girl was afflicted with a sense of lost companionship; thereafter she had to suffer it out by herself.

There would be more pain than profit in describing her reflections, agonizings. Sufficient to know that a knife in the breast hurts a woman less than a stab at her reputation, and her thought was none the sweeter for the knowledge that she had drawn the blow by giving way to her pique. Her resolve as expressed next morning to Jimmy Glaves is of more concern.

She had turned impatiently from Mrs. Glaves's tearful apologies, but when the old trustee laid a kindly hand on her shoulder, as she passed him in the garden on her way to school, she gave him honest eyes.

"Now, you ain't to bother. 'Twas on'y Betsy Rodd, the old harridan. Nobody minds her."

But she shook her head in accordance with her resolution to face truth. "She was expressing what was in everybody's minds. I know it, and though I didn't intend it, I'm partly to blame, for their suspicion." Her mouth drew thin and firm as she finished. "I shall live it down."

"Course you will!" he heartily agreed. "That's my brave girl!" But his face darkened after she had passed on, and he slowly wagged a grave head as he plied his hoe in the garden.