CHAPTER XIII – A FAIR ADVOCATE
Thanks to the fashion in which the hotel-keeper managed the affair, the gambler left the settlement without personal injury, but very little richer than when he entered it. The rest of those who were present at his meeting with Witham were also not desirous that their friends should know they had been victimized, and because Dane was discreet, news of what had happened might never have reached Silverdale, had not one of the younger men ridden in to the railroad a few days later. Odd scraps of conversation overheard led him to suspect that something unusual had taken place, but as nobody seemed willing to supply details, he returned to Silverdale with his curiosity unsatisfied. As it happened, he was shortly afterwards present at a gathering of his neighbours at Macdonald’s farm and came across Ferris there.
“I heard fragments of a curious story at the settlement,” he said. “There was trouble of some kind in which a professional gambler figured last Saturday night, and though nobody seemed to want to talk about it, I surmised that somebody from Silverdale was concerned in it.”
He had perhaps spoken a trifle more loudly than he had intended, and there were a good many of the Silverdale farmers with a few of their wives and daughters whose attention was not wholly confined to the efforts of Mrs. Macdonald at the piano in the long room just then. In any case a voice broke through the silence that followed the final chords.
“Ferris could tell us if he liked. He was there that night.”
Ferris, who had cause for doing so, looked uncomfortable, and endeavoured to sign to the first speaker that it was not desirable to pursue the topic.
“I have been in tolerably often of late. Had things to attend to,” he said.
The other man was, however, possessed by a mischievous spirit, or did not understand him. “You may just as well tell us now as later, because you never kept a secret in your life,” he said.
In the meantime, several of the others had gathered about them, and Mrs. Macdonald, who had joined the group, smiled as she said, “There is evidently something interesting going on. Mayn’t I know, Gordon?”
“Of course,” said the man, who had visited the settlement. “You shall know as much as I do, though that is little, and if it excites your curiosity you can ask Ferris for the rest. He is only anxious to enhance the value of his story by being mysterious. Well, there was a more or less dramatic happening, of the kind our friends in the old country unwarrantably fancy is typical of the West, in the saloon at the settlement not long ago. Cards, pistols, a professional gambler, and the unmasking of foul play, don’t you know. Somebody from Silverdale played the leading rôle.”
“How interesting!” said a young English girl. “Now, I used to fancy something of that kind happened here every day before I came out to the prairie. Please tell us, Mr. Ferris! One would like to find there was just a trace of reality in our picturesque fancies of debonair desperadoes and big-hatted cavaliers.”
There was a curious expression in Ferris’ face, but as he glanced round at the rest, who were regarding him expectantly, he did not observe that Maud Barrington and her aunt had just come in and stood close behind him.
“Can’t you see there’s no getting out of it, Ferris?” said somebody.
“Well,” said the lad in desperation, “I can only admit that Gordon is right. There was foul play and a pistol drawn, but I’m sorry that I can’t add anything further. In fact, it wouldn’t be quite fair of me.”
“But the man from Silverdale?” asked Mrs. Macdonald.
“I’m afraid,” said Ferris, with the air of one shielding a friend, “I can’t tell you anything about him.”
“I know Mr. Courthorne drove in that night,” said the young English girl, who was not endued with very much discretion.
“Courthorne!” said one of the bystanders, and there was a momentary silence that was very expressive. “Was he concerned in what took place, Ferris?”
“Yes,” said the lad with apparent reluctance. “Mrs. Macdonald, you will remember that they dragged it out of me, but I will tell you nothing more whatever.”
“It seems to me you have told us quite sufficient and perhaps a trifle too much,” said somebody.
There was a curious silence. All of those present were more or less acquainted with Courthorne’s past history, and the suggestion of foul play coupled with the mention of a professional gambler had been significant. Ferris, while committing himself in no way, had certainly said sufficient. Then there was a sudden turning of heads as a young woman moved quietly into the midst of the group. She was ominously calm, but she stood very straight, and there was a little hard glitter in her eyes, which reminded one or two of them who noticed it of those of Colonel Barrington. The fingers of one hand were also closed at her side.
“I overheard you telling a story, Ferris, but you have a bad memory and left rather too much out,” she said.
“They compelled me to tell them what I did, Miss Barrington,” said the lad, who winced beneath her gaze. “Now, there is really nothing to be gained by going any further into the affair. Shall I play something for you, Mrs. Macdonald?”
He turned as he spoke, and would have edged away but that one of the men, at a glance from the girl, laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t be in a hurry, Ferris. I fancy Miss Barrington has something more to tell you,” he said dryly.
The girl thanked him with a gesture. “I want you to supply the most important part,” she said, and the lad, saying nothing, changed colour under the glance she cast upon him. “You do not seem willing. Then perhaps I had better do it for you. There were two men from Silverdale directly concerned in the affair, and one of them at no slight risk to himself did a very generous thing. That one was Mr. Courthorne. Did you see him lay a single stake upon a card, or do anything that led you to suppose he was there for the purpose of gambling that evening?”
“No,” said the lad, seeing she knew the truth, and his hoarse voice was scarcely audible.
“Then,” said Maud Barrington, “I want you to tell us what you did see him do.”
Ferris said nothing, and though the girl laughed a little as she glanced at the wondering group, her voice was icily disdainful.
“Well,” she said, “I will tell you. You saw him question a professional gambler’s play to save a man who had no claim on him from ruin, and, with only one comrade to back him, drive the swindler, who had a pistol, from the field. He had, you admit, no interest of any kind in the game?”
Ferris had grown crimson again, and the veins on his forehead showed swollen high. “No,” he said, almost abjectly.
Maud Barrington turned from him to her hostess as she answered, “That will suffice, in the meanwhile, until I can decide whether it is desirable to make known the rest of the tale. I brought the new song Evelyn wanted, Mrs. Macdonald, and I will play it for her if she would care to try it.”
She moved away with the elder lady, and left the rest astonished to wonder what had become of Ferris, who was seen no more that evening, while presently Witham came in.
His face was a trifle weary, for he had toiled since the sun rose above the rim of the prairie, and when the arduous day was over, and those who worked for him were glad to rest their aching limbs, had driven two leagues to Macdonald’s. Why he had done so he was not willing to admit, but he glanced round the long room anxiously as he came in, and his eyes brightened as they rested on Maud Barrington. They were, however, observant eyes, and he noticed that there was a trifle more colour than usual in the girl’s pale-tinted face, and signs of suppressed curiosity about some of the rest. When he had greeted his hostess, he turned to one of the men.
“It seems to me you are either trying not to see something, Gordon, or to forget it as soon as you can,” he said.
Gordon laughed a little. “You are not often mistaken, Courthorne? That is precisely what we are doing. I presume you haven’t heard what occurred here an hour ago?”
“No!” said Witham. “I’m not very curious if it does not concern me.”
Gordon looked at him steadily. “I fancy it does. You see, that young fool Ferris was suggesting that you had been mixed up in something not very creditable at the settlement lately. As it happened, Maud Barrington overheard him and made him retract before the company. She did it effectively, and if it had been any one else, the scene would have been almost theatrical. Still, you know nothing seems out of place when it comes from the Colonel’s niece. Nor if you had heard her would you have wanted a better advocate.”
For a moment the bronze deepened in Witham’s forehead, and there was a gleam in his eyes, but though it passed as rapidly as it came, Gordon had seen it, and smiled when the farmer moved away.
“That’s a probability I never counted on,” he thought. “Still, I fancy if it came about, it would suit everybody but the Colonel.”
Then he turned as Mrs. Macdonald came up to him. “What are you doing here alone when I see there is nobody talking to the girl from Winnipeg?” she said.
The man laughed a little. “I was wondering whether it is a good sign, or otherwise, when a young woman is, so far as she can decently be, uncivil to a man who desires her good-will.”
Mrs. Macdonald glanced at him sharply, and then shook her head. “The question is too deep for you – and it is not your affair. Besides, haven’t you seen that indiscreet freedom of speech is not encouraged at Silverdale?”
In the meanwhile Witham, crossing the room, took a vacant place at Maud Barrington’s side. She turned her head a moment and looked at him.
Witham nodded. “Yes, I heard,” he said. “Why did you do it?”
Maud Barrington made a little gesture of impatience. “That is quite unnecessary. You know I sent you.”
“Yes,” said Witham a trifle dryly, “I see. You would have felt mean if you hadn’t defended me.”
“No,” said the girl, with a curious smile. “That was not exactly the reason, but we cannot talk too long here. Dane is anxious to take us home in his new buggy, but it would apparently be a very tight fit for three. Will you drive me over?”
Witham only nodded, for Mrs. Macdonald approached in pursuit of him, but he spent the rest of the evening in a state of expectancy, and Maud Barrington fancied that his hard hands were suspiciously unresponsive as she took them when he helped her into the Silverdale wagon – a vehicle a strong man could have lifted, and in no way resembling its English prototype. The team was mettlesome, the lights of Macdonald’s homestead soon faded behind them, and they were racing with many a lurch and jolt straight as the crow flies across the prairie.
There was no moon, but the stars shone far up in the soft indigo, and the grasses whirled back in endless ripples to the humming wheels, dimmed to the dusky blue that suffused the whole intermerging sweep of earth and sky. The sweetness of wild peppermint rose through the coolness of the dew, and the voices of the wilderness were part of the silence that was but the perfect balance of the nocturnal harmonies. The two who knew and loved the prairie could pick out each one of them. Nor did it seem that there was any need of speech on such a night, but at last Witham turned with a little smile to his companion, as he checked the horses on the slope of a billowy rise.
“One feels diffident about intruding on this great quietness,” he said. “Still, I fancy you had a purpose in asking me to drive you home.”
“Yes,” said the girl, with a curious gentleness. “In the first place, though I know it isn’t necessary with you, I want to thank you. I made Dane tell me, and you have done all I wished – splendidly.”
Witham laughed. “Well, you see, it naturally came easy to me.”
Maud Barrington noticed the trace of grimness in his voice. “Please try to overlook our unkindness,” she said. “Is it really needful to keep reminding me? And how was I to know what you were, when I had only heard that wicked story?”
Witham felt a little thrill run through him, for which reason he looked straight in front of him and shifted his grasp on the reins. Disdainful and imperious as she was at times, he knew there was a wealth of softer qualities in his companion now. Her daintiness in thought and person, and honesty of purpose, appealed to him, while that night her mere physical presence had an effect that was almost bewildering. For a moment he wondered vaguely how far a man with what fate had thrust upon him might dare to go, and then with a little shiver saw once more the barrier of deceit and imposture.
“You believe it was not a true one?” he asked.
“Of course,” said Maud Barrington. “How could it be? And you have been very patient under our suspicions. Now, if you still value the good-will you once asked for, it is yours absolutely.”
“But you may still hear unpleasant stories about me,” said Witham, with a note the girl had not heard before in his voice.
“I should not believe them,” she said.
“Still,” persisted Witham, “if the tales were true?”
Maud Barrington did nothing by halves. “Then I should remember that there is always so much we do not know which would put a different colour on any story, and I believe they could never be true again.”
Witham checked a little gasp of wonder and delight and Maud Barrington looked away across the prairie. She was not usually impulsive and seldom lightly bestowed gifts that were worth the having, and the man knew that the faith in him she had confessed to was the result of a conviction that would last until he himself shattered it. Then, in the midst of his elation, he shivered again and drew the lash across the near horse’s back. The wonder and delight he felt had suddenly gone.
“Few would venture to predict as much. Now and then I feel that our deeds are scarcely contrived by our own will, and one could fancy our parts had been thrust upon us in a grim joke,” he said. “For instance, isn’t it strange that I should have a share in the rousing of Silverdale to a sense of its responsibilities? Lord, what I could make of it if fate had but given me a fair opportunity!”
He spoke almost fiercely, but the words did not displease the girl. The forceful ring in his voice set something thrilling within her, and she knew by this time that his assertions seldom went beyond the fact.
“But you will have the opportunity, and we need you here,” she said.
“No,” said Witham slowly. “I am afraid not. Still, I will finish the work I see in front of me. That at least – one cannot hope for the unattainable.”
Maud Barrington was sensible of a sudden chill. “Still, if one has strength and patience, is anything quite unattainable?”
Witham looked out across the prairie, and for a moment the demons of pride and ambition rioted within him. He knew there were in him the qualities that compel success, and the temptation to stretch out a daring hand and take all he longed for grew almost overmastering. Still, he also knew how strong the innate prejudices of caste and tradition are in most women of his companion’s station, and she had never hidden one aspect of her character from him. It was with a smothered groan he realized that if he flung the last shred of honour aside and grasped the forbidden fruit it would turn to bitterness in his mouth.
“Yes,” he said very slowly. “There is a limit, which only fools would pass.”
Then there was silence for a while, until, as they swept across the rise, Maud Barrington laughed as she pointed to the lights that blinked in the hollow, and Witham realized that the barrier between them stood firm again.
“Our views seldom coincide for very long, but there is something else to mention before we reach the Grange,” she said. “You must have paid out a good many dollars for the ploughing of your land and mine, and nobody’s exchequer is inexhaustible at Silverdale. Now I want you to take a cheque from me.”
“Is it necessary, that I should?”
“Of course,” said the girl, with a trace of displeasure.
Witham laughed. “Then I shall be prepared to hand you my account whenever you demand it.”
He did not look at his companion again, but with a tighter grip than there was any need for on the reins, sent the light wagon jolting down the slope to Silverdale Grange.
CHAPTER XIV – THE UNEXPECTED
The sun beat down on the prairie, which was already losing its flush of green, but it was cool where Maud Barrington and her aunt stood in the shadow of the bluff by Silverdale Grange. The birches, tasselled now with whispering foliage, divided the homestead from the waste which would lie white and desolate under the parching heat, and that afternoon it seemed to the girl that the wall of green shut out more than the driving dust and sun-glare from the Grange, for where the trees were thinner she could see moving specks of men and horses athwart the skyline.
They had toiled in the sun-baked furrow since the first flush of crimson streaked the prairie’s rim, and the chill of dusk would fall upon the grasses before their work was done. Those men who bore the burden and heat of the day were, the girl knew, helots now, but there was in them the silent vigour and something of the sombreness of the land of rock and forest they came from, and a time would come when others would work for them. Winning slowly, holding grimly, they were moving on, while secure in its patrician tranquility Silverdale stood still, and Maud Barrington smiled curiously as she glanced down at the long white robe that clung very daintily about her and then towards her companions in the tennis field. Her apparel had cost many dollars in Montreal, and there was a joyous irresponsibility in the faces of those she watched.
“It is a little unequal, isn’t it, aunt?” she said. “One feels inclined to wonder what we have done that we should have exemption from the charge laid upon the first tiller of the soil we and the men who are plodding through the dust there are descended from.”
Miss Barrington laughed a little as she glanced with a nod of comprehension at the distant toilers, and more gravely towards the net. Merry voices came up to her through the shadows of the trees as English lad and English maiden, lissom and picturesque in many-hued jackets and light dresses, flitted across the little square of velvet green. The men had followed the harrow and seeder a while that morning. Some of them, indeed, had for a few hours driven a team, and then left the rest to the hired hands, for the stress and sweat of effort that was to turn the wilderness into a granary was not for such as them.
“Don’t you think it is all made up to those others?” she asked.
“In one sense – yes,” said the girl. “Of course, one can see that all effort must have its idealistic aspect, and there may be men who find their compensation in the thrill of the fight, and the knowledge of work well done when they rest at night. Still, I fancy most of them only toil to eat, and their views are not revealed to us. We are, you see, women – and we live at Silverdale.”
Her aunt smiled again. “How long is it since the plough crossed the Red River, and what is Manitoba now? How did those mile furrows come there, and who drove the road that takes the wheat out through the granite of the Superior shore? It is more than their appetites that impelled those men, my dear. Still, it is scarcely wise to expect too much when one meets them, for though one could feel it is presumptuous to forgive its deficiencies, the Berserk type of manhood is not conspicuous for its refinement.”
For no apparent reason Maud Barrington evaded her aunt’s gaze. “You,” she said dryly, “have forgiven one of that type a good deal already, but, at least, we have never seen him when the fit was upon him.”
Miss Barrington laughed. “Still, I have no doubt that, sooner or later, you will enjoy the spectacle.”
Just then a light wagon came up behind them, and when one of the hired men helped them in they swept out of the cool shade into the dust and glare of the prairie, and when, some little time later, with the thud of hoofs and rattle of wheels softened by the bleaching sod, they rolled down a rise, there was spread out before them evidence of man’s activity.
Acre by acre, gleaming chocolate brown against the grey and green of the prairie, the wheat loam rolled away, back to the ridge, over it, and on again. It was such a breadth of sowing as had but once, when wheat was dear, been seen at Silverdale, but still across the foreground, advancing in echelon, came lines of dusty teams, and there was a meaning in the furrows they left behind them, for they were not ploughing where the wheat had been. Each wave of lustrous clods that rolled from the gleaming shares was so much rent from the virgin prairie, and a promise of what would come when man had fulfilled his mission and the wilderness would blossom. There was a wealth of food stored, little by little during ages past counting, in every yard of the crackling sod to await the time when the toiler with the sweat of the primeval curse upon his forehead should unseal it with the plough. It was also borne in upon Maud Barrington that the man who directed those energies was either altogether without discernment, or one who saw further than his fellows and had an excellent courage, when he flung his substance into the furrows while wheat was going down. Then, as the hired man pulled up the wagon, she saw him.
A great plough with triple shares had stopped at the end of the furrow, and the leading horses were apparently at variance with the man who, while he gave of his own strength to the uttermost, was asking too much from them. Young and indifferently broken, tortured by swarming insects, and galled by the strain of the collar, they had laid back their ears, and the wickedness of the bronco strain shone in their eyes. One rose almost upright amidst a clatter of harness, its mate squealed savagely, and the man who loosed one hand from the headstall flung out an arm. Then he and the pair whirled round together amidst the trampled clods in a blurred medley of spume-flecked bodies, soil-stained jean, flung-up hoofs, and an arm that swung and smote again. Miss Barrington grew a trifle pale as she watched, but a little glow crept into her niece’s eyes.
The struggle, however, ended suddenly, and hailing a man who plodded behind another team, Witham picked up his broad hat, which was trampled into shapelessness, and turned towards the wagon. There was dust and spume upon him, a rent in the blue shirt, and the knuckles of one hand dripped red, but he laughed as he said, “I did not know we had an audience, but this, you see, is necessary.”
“Is it?” asked Miss Barrington, who glanced at the ploughing. “When wheat is going down?”
Witham nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I mean, to me; and the price of wheat is only part of the question.”
Miss Barrington stretched out her hand, though her niece said nothing at all. “Of course, but I want you to help us down. Maud has an account you have not sent in, to ask you for.”
Witham first turned to the two men who now stood by the idle machine. “You’ll have to drive those beasts of mine as best you can, Tom, and Jake will take your team. Get them off again now. This piece of breaking has to be put through before we loose again.”
Then he handed his visitors down, and Maud Barrington fancied as he walked with them to the house that the fashion in which the damaged hat hung down over his eyes would have rendered most other men ludicrous. He left them a space in his bare sitting-room, which suggested only grim utility, and Miss Barrington smiled when her niece glanced at her.
“And this is how Lance, the profligate, lives!” said she.
Maud Barrington shook her head. “No,” she said. “Can you believe that this man was ever a prodigal?”
Her aunt was a trifle less astonished than she would once have been, but before she could answer Witham, who had made a trifling change in his clothing, came in.
“I can give you some green tea, though I am afraid it might be a good deal better than it is, and our crockery is not all you have been used to,” he said. “You see, we have only time to think of one thing until the sowing is through.”
Miss Barrington’s eyes twinkled. “And then?”
“Then,” said Witham, with a little laugh, “there will be prairie hay to cut, and after that the harvest coming on.”
“In the meanwhile, it was business that brought me here, and I have a cheque with me,” said Maud Barrington. “Please let us get it over first of all.”
Witham sat down at a table and scribbled on a strip of paper. “That,” he said gravely, “is what you owe me for the ploughing.”
There was a little flush in his face as he took the cheque the girl filled in, and both felt somewhat grateful for the entrance of a man in blue jean with the tea. It was of very indifferent quality, and he had sprinkled a good deal on the tray, but Witham felt a curious thrill as he watched the girl pour it out at the head of the bare table. Her white dress gleamed in the light of a dusty window, and the shadowy cedar boarding behind her forced up each line of the shapely figure. Again the maddening temptation took hold of him and he wondered whether he had betrayed too much, when he felt the elder lady’s eyes upon him. There was a tremor in his brown fingers as he took the cup held out to him, but his voice was steady.
“You can scarcely fancy how pleasant this is,” he said. “For eight years, in fact, ever since I left England, no woman has ever done any of these graceful little offices for me.”
Miss Barrington glanced at her niece, and both of them knew that, if the lawyer had traced Courthorne’s past correctly, this could not be true. Still, there was no disbelief in the elder lady’s eyes, and the girl’s faith remained unshaken.
“Eight years,” she said, with a little smile, “is a very long while.”
“Yes,” said Witham, “horribly long, and one year at Silverdale is worth them all – that is, a year like this one, which is going to be remembered by all who have sown wheat on the prairie; and that leads up to something. When I have ploughed all my own holding I shall not be content, and I want to make another bargain. Give me the use of your unbroken land, and I will find horses, seed, and men, while we will share what it yields us when the harvest is in.”
The girl was astonished. This, she knew, was splendid audacity, for the man had already staken very heavily on the crop he had sown, and while the daring of it stirred her she sat silent a moment.
“I could lose nothing, but you will have to bring out a host of men and have risked so much,” she said. “Nobody but you, and I, and three or four others in all the province, are ploughing more than half their holdings.”
The suggestion of comradeship set Witham’s blood tingling, but it was with a little laugh he turned over the pile of papers on the table, and then took them up in turn.
“‘Very little ploughing has been done in the tracts of Minnesota previously alluded to. Farmers find wheat cannot be grown at present prices, and there is apparently no prospect of a rise,’” he said.
“‘The Dakota wheat-growers are mostly following. They can’t quite figure how they would get eighty cents for the dollar’s worth of seeding this year.’
“‘Milling very quiet in Winnipeg. No inquiries from Europe coming in, and Manitoba dealers generally find little demand for harrows or seeders this year. Reports from Assiniboia seem to show that the one hope this season will be mixed farming and the neglect of cereals.’”
“There is only one inference,” he said. “When the demand comes there will be nothing to meet it with.”
“When it comes,” said Maud Barrington quietly. “But you who believe it will stand alone.”
“Almost,” said Witham. “Still there are a few much cleverer men who feel as I do. I can’t give you all my reasons, or read you the sheaf of papers from the Pacific slope, London, New York, Australia; but, while men lose hope, and little by little the stocks run down, the world must be fed. Just as sure as the harvest follows the sowing, it will wake up suddenly to the fact that it is hungry. They are buying cotton and scattering their money in other nations’ bonds in the old country now, for they and the rest of Europe forget their necessities at times, but it is impossible to picture them finding their granaries empty and clamouring for bread?”
It was a crucial test of faith, and the man knew it, as the woman did. He stood alone, with the opinions of the multitude against him; but there was, Maud Barrington felt, a great if undefinable difference between his quiet resolution and the gambler’s recklessness. Once more the boldness of his venture stirred her, and this time there was a little flash in her eyes as she bore witness to her perfect confidence.
“You shall have the land, every acre of it, to do what you like with, and I will ask no questions whether you win or lose,” she said.
Then Miss Barrington glanced at him in turn. “Lance, I have a thousand dollars I want you to turn into wheat for me.”
Witham’s fingers trembled, and a darker hue crept into his tan. “Madam,” he said, “I can take no money from you.”
“You must,” said the little white-haired lady. “For your mother’s sake, Lance. It is a brave thing you are doing, and you are the son of one who was my dearest friend.”
Witham turned his head away, and both women wondered when he looked round again. His face seemed a trifle drawn, and his voice was strained.
“I hope,” he said slowly, “it will in some degree make amends for others I have done. In the meanwhile, there are reasons why your confidence humiliates me.”
Miss Barrington rose and her niece after her. “Still I believe it is warranted, and you will remember there are two women who have trusted you, hoping for your success. And now, I fancy, we have kept you too long.”
Witham stood holding the door open a moment, with his head bent, and then suddenly straightened himself.
“I can at least be honest with you in this venture,” he said, with a curious quietness.