A Prairie Courtship

She closed one hand tight and a flush crept into her face as she made up her mind on one point, and she was thankful while she did so that she was on the Canadian prairie, where the thing seemed easier than it would have done in England. In that new land time-honored prejudices and hampering traditions did not seem to count. Men and women outgrew them there and obeyed the impulses of human nature, which were, after all, elemental and existent long before the invention of what were, perhaps, in the more complex society of other lands, necessary fetters. Thorne, the pedler, farmer, railroad hand, or whatever he might become, should at least know that she loved him and decide with that knowledge before him whether he would go away.

Then, growing a little more collected, she considered the second point. Though Hall and Farquhar had cast considerable doubt upon his ability to help, there was just a possibility that Hunter might hold out a hand, and she would stoop to beg for any favor that might be shown her lover. This latter decision, however, she prudently determined to keep from Thorne in the meanwhile.

By and by she walked quietly back to the house and busied herself as usual, though late in the afternoon she asked Mrs. Farquhar for a horse and the buggy. Her employer did not trouble her with any questions as to why she wanted them, though she favored her with a glance of unobtrusive but very keen scrutiny, and soon after supper the hired man brought the buggy to the door. Then Alison came out from her room, where she had spent some time carefully comparing the two or three dresses she had clung to when she had parted with the rest in Winnipeg, one after another. She had attired herself in the one that became her best, for she felt that there must be nothing wanting in the gift she meant to offer her lover. She recognized that this was what her intention amounted to. What other women did with more reserve, veiling their advances in disguises which were after all so flimsy that nobody except those who wished could be deceived, she would do with imperious openness.

The days were now rapidly growing shorter, and when she reached Thorne's homestead the sun hung low above the verge of the great white plain. The man was not in sight, which struck her as strange, as there would be light enough to work for some time yet, but she was not astonished that he had evidently not heard her approach, because she had driven slowly for the last mile, almost repenting of her rashness and wondering whether she should not turn and go back again. Once she had set about it, the thing she had undertaken appeared increasingly difficult. Indeed, she knew that had the man been less severely pressed nothing would have driven her into the action she contemplated. It was only the fact that he was face to face with disaster, beaten down, desperate, that warranted the sacrifice of her reserve and pride.

Getting down at length, she left the horse, which was a quiet one, and walked toward the house. The door stood open when she reached it, and looking in she saw the man sitting at a table, on which there lay a strip of paper covered with figures. His face was worn and set, and every line of his slack pose was expressive of dejection. He did not immediately see her, and a deep pity overwhelmed her and helped to sweep away her doubts and hesitation as she glanced round the room. It was growing shadowy, but it looked horribly comfortless, and the few dishes that were still scattered about the table bore the remnants of a singularly uninviting meal. There was a portion of a loaf, blackened outside, sad and damp within; butter that had liquefied and partly congealed again in discolored streaks; a morsel of half-cooked pork reposing in solid fat; and a can of flavored syrup, black with flies. She wondered how any one coming back oppressed with anxiety from a day of exhausting toil could eat such fare. Then she noticed a small heap of tattered garments, which he evidently had no leisure to mend, lying on the floor, and while it brought her no sense of repulsion, the sight of them further troubled her. These were things which jarred on the beneficent, home-making instincts which suddenly awoke within her nature, and they moved her to a compassionate longing to care for and shelter the lonely man.

Then he looked up and saw her, and she flushed at the swift elation in his face, which, however, almost immediately grew hard again. It was as though he had yielded for a moment to some pleasurable impulse, and had then, with an effort, repressed it and resumed his self-control.

"Come in," he invited, rising with outstretched hand, and she suddenly recalled how she had last crossed that threshold in his company. There had been careless laughter in his eyes then, he had moved and spoken with a joyous optimism, and now there was plain upon him the stamp of defeat. Even physically the man looked different.

She sat down when he drew her out a chair, but he remained standing, leaning with one hand on the table.

"Is Mrs. Farquhar outside?"

"No; I drove across alone."

He looked at her with a hint of astonishment and something that suggested a natural curiosity as to the cause for the visit, which she now found it insuperably difficult to explain.

"You haven't been at work this evening?" she asked.

"No," replied Thorne. "I rode in to the railroad early yesterday and I've just got back after calling at two or three farms west of the creek. It seemed possible that I might be able to hire a couple of men I'd wired for back along the line, but I found that somebody else had got hold of them at another station. As a matter of fact, I had expected it."

"Then you must have made the journey almost without a rest!"

"Volador's dead played out," answered Thorne. "I had to do something, though it seemed pretty useless in any case."

"Ah!" Alison exclaimed softly; "then you mean to go on?"

"Until I'm turned out, which will no doubt happen very shortly."

"I suppose that will hurt you?"

He looked at her for a moment with his face awry and signs of a sternly repressed longing in his eyes.

"Yes," he answered, "it will hurt me more than anything I could have had to face. In fact, the thought of it has been almost unbearable; but it's now clear that I shall have to go through with it."

This was satisfactory to Alison in some respects, and she was quick to sympathize.

"It must be very hard to give up the farm on which you have spent so much earnest work."

"Yes," assented Thorne, with something in his tone that suggested half-contemptuous indifference to the sacrifice; "it won't be easy to give up even the farm."

Then for the first time it occurred to him that there was an unusual hint of strain in her manner, and that he had never seen her dressed in the same fashion before. She did not look daintier, for daintiness was not quite the quality he would have ascribed to her, but more highly cultivated, farther beyond the reach of a ruined farmer, though there was a strange softness – it almost seemed tenderness – shining in her eyes. He gripped the table hard and his face grew stern as he gazed at her. He felt that it was almost impossible that he would ever have the strength to let her go.

"What will you do then?" she asked with what seemed a merciless persistency.

"Go away," declared Thorne. "Strike west and vanish out of sight. I've no doubt somebody will hire me to load up railroad ballast or herd cattle." He smiled at her harshly. "After all, it will be a relief to my few friends. They may be a little sorry – but my absence will save their making excuses for me."

Alison looked up at him steadily, though there was a flush of color in her cheeks.

"You must be just to them," she said. "Why should they invent excuses – when you have made such a fight with so much against you? Besides, you are wrong when you say they might be – a little sorry. Can you believe that it would be easy to let you go away?"

Thorne frowned as he met her gaze. He did not know what to make of this, but there was a suggestiveness in her voice that was almost too much for him.

"Is there any one who would have much difficulty in doing that?" he asked with a quietness that cost him a determined effort.

"Yes," murmured Alison, with suddenly lowered eyes; "there is at least one person who would feel it dreadfully."

He gazed at her, straining to cling to the resolution that had almost deserted him, though his face was firmly set.

"It is quite true," she added, with flaming cheeks. "I must say it. I mean myself."

He drew back a pace and stood very still, as though afraid to trust himself.

"Don't make it all unbearable!" he cried at length. "There's only one course open to me. It's hard enough already."

Alison faced him with a new steadiness.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "you can only look at it from your point of view – can't you understand yet that there is another? If you had meant to go away you should have gone – some time ago."

Thorne closed his hands firmly.

"I'm afraid you are right; but I believed that I might make a success of this farming venture."

The girl laughed with open scorn.

"Dare you believe that would have mattered so very much to me? Do you think I didn't know why you turned farmer, and why you have since then done things that none of your neighbors would have been capable of?"

"It seemed necessary," explained Thorne, still with the same expressive quietness. "I did so because I wanted you, and that is exactly what makes defeat so bitter now."

"And you imagined that you had hidden your motive? Can you believe that a man could change his whole mode of life and take up a burden he had carefully avoided, as you have done, without having the woman on whose account he did it understand why? Are we so blind or utterly foolish? Don't you know that our perceptions and intuitions are twice as keen as yours?"

"Then you understood what my object was all along – and it didn't strike you as absurd and impossible?"

Alison smiled at him.

"Why should it seem absurd that I should love you, Mavy?"

He came no nearer, but stood still, looking at her with elation and trouble curiously mingled in his face, and she realized that the fight was but half won. He had of late sloughed off his wayward carelessness and she knew that there had always been a depth of resolute character beneath it. He was a man who would do what he felt was the fitting thing, even though it hurt him.

"Well," he said, speaking slowly in a tense voice, "ever since I first saw you I longed that this should come about. It was what I worked for, and nothing would have been too hard that brought me nearer you, but it's almost a cruelty that I should have succeeded – now."

"Why?" asked Alison, bracing herself for another effort, for the strain was beginning to tell. "Is what you have won of no value to you?"

Thorne spread out his hands as if in desperation.