XII The Break
For three days a brown smoke had hovered over the black line of distant spruce. It was far away, fifty miles at least. Yet anxious eyes turned constantly its way until, the evening of the fourth day, the omen faded. Then a sigh of relief passed over the settlements. “Back-fired itself out among the lakes,” the settlers told one another. Then, being recovered from their scare, they invidiously reflected on the Indian agent who permitted his wards to start fires to scare out the deer. Nor did the fact that the agent was blameless in the matter take from the satisfaction accruing from their grumblings.
That evening five persons sat with Helen at supper, for she had invited the Leslies and Danvers, Molyneux’s farm pupil, to meet her guests. For her this meal was the culmination of days of anxious planning. To set out the table she and Mrs. Leslie had ransacked their respective establishments, and she blushed when Kate Ravell enthused over the result.
“What beautiful china!” she exclaimed, picking up one of Mrs. Leslie’s Wedgwood cups. “We have nothing like this.” Then, glancing at the white napery, crystal, and silver, she said, “Who would think that we were two thousand miles from civilization?”
It was, indeed, hard to realize. Obedient to Mrs. Leslie’s orders, her husband and Danvers had fished—albeit with reluctance—forgotten dress-suits from bottom deeps of leather portmanteaus. She herself looked her prettiest in a gown of rich black lace superimposed on some white material, and, carrying her imperative generosity to the limit, she had forced one of her own dinner-dresses upon Helen. Of a filmy, delicate blue, it brought out the young wife’s golden beauty. From the low corsage her slender throat and delicate face rose like a pink lily from a violet calyx. Usually she wore her redundant hair coiled in a thick braid around the crown of her head for comfort; but to-night it was done upon her neck in a loose figure of eight that revealed its mass and sheen. Looking from Mrs. Leslie to Helen, Kate Ravell had secretly congratulated herself upon having, despite her husband’s protest, slipped one of her own pretty dresses into his valise.
His laugh, a wholesome peal that accorded with his good-humored face, followed her remark. “She didn’t think that at Lone Tree,” he said. “A lumber-wagon was the best the liveryman could do for us in the way of conveyance, and when Kate asked if he hadn’t a carriage he looked astonished and scratched his head.
“‘Ain’t but one in town,’ he answered, ‘an’ it belongs to Doc Ellis. ’Tain’t been used sence he druv the small-pox case down to the Brandon pest-house. I ’low he’d let you have it.’”
His wife echoed his laugh. “It was a little rough, but this—it’s great!” She pointed out through the open door over the wheat, golden under the setting sun, to the dark green and yellow of woods and prairies. “You are to be envied, Nell. Your house is so artistic. The life must be ideal—”
Inwardly, Mrs. Leslie snorted: “Humph! If she could see her milking, up to ankles in mud on rainy days—or feeding those filthy calves?” Aloud, she said, “Unfortunately, Helen isn’t here very often—spends most of her time in Winnipeg.” Ignoring Helen’s pleading look, she ran on, “Did you store your things, my dear, or let the house furnished?”
Thus entrapped, Helen could only answer that her goods were stored, and her embarrassment deepened when Mrs. Leslie continued: “It is such a pity, Mrs. Ravell, that you could not have met Mr. Carter! He is such a dear fellow, so quiet and refined. Fred”—Leslie’s grin faded under her frown—“what is the matter?”
“A crumb, my dear,” he apologized. “Excuse me, please.”
“We shall have to return you to the nursery.” Her glance returned to Kate Ravell, and, oblivious of the entreaty in Helen’s eyes, she ran on in praise of Carter. He was so reserved! The reserve of strength that goes with good-nature! Resourceful—and so she flowed on with her panegyrics. She was not altogether insincere. Helen caught herself blushing with pleasure whenever, leaving her fictions, Mrs. Leslie touched on some sterling quality. Twice she was startled to hear put into words subtilties that she herself had only felt, and on each occasion she narrowly watched Mrs. Leslie, an adumbration of suspicion forming in her mind. But each time it was removed by absurd praise of hypothetical qualities or virtues Carter did not possess. So Mrs. Leslie praised and teased.
What influenced her? It is hard to answer a question that inheres in the complexities of such a frivolous yet passionate nature. Naturally good-natured, she would help Helen out in all things that did not cross her own purposes. The sequel proves that she had not yet got Carter out of her hot blood. Given which two things, her action, teasings, and panegyrics are at least understandable.
“We are very sorry,” Kate Ravell said when Mrs. Leslie gave pause. “We did wish to see him. Do you suppose, Helen, that we might if we stayed another day?”
It was more than possible, but Ravell relieved Helen of a sudden deadly fear. “Can’t do it, my dear. We are tied down by schedule. Should miss the Japan steamer and have to lay over in Vancouver two weeks.”
Kate sighed. Newly married, she had all of a young wife’s desire to see her girl friend happy as herself; nor would aught but ocular demonstration satisfy the longing. She was expressing the hope that Carter and Helen should some day visit them in their Eastern home, when she suddenly paused, staring out-doors. Following her glance, Mrs. Leslie saw a man, a big fellow in lumberman’s shirt and overalls. The garments were burned in several places, so that blackened skin showed through. His eyes were bloodshot, his face sooty, which accounted for Mrs. Leslie’s not recognizing him at once.
“Mr. Carter!” she exclaimed, after a second look.
Helen was pouring tea, but she sprang up at the name, spilling a cup of boiling tea over her wrist. She did not feel the scald. Breathless, she stood, a hand pressed against her bosom, until Mrs. Leslie, the always ready, burst into merry laughter.
“What a blackamoor! How you frightened us! Where have you been?”
Coming up from the stables, Carter had heard voices, laughter, the tinkle of teacups, and the sound had afflicted him with something of the feeling that assails the wanderer whose returning ears give him sounds of revelry in the old homestead. He had suffered, during his absence, remorse for his own obstinacy mingling in equal proportions with the pain of Helen’s coldness. Absence had been rendered endurable by the thought that it would make reconciliation the easier; but now that he was returned, ready to give and ask forgiveness, to pour his good news into her sympathetic ear, he found her merrymaking.
His was a hard position. Between himself, rough, ragged, dirty, and these well-groomed men in evening dress, there could be no more startling contrast. He felt it. The table, with its snowy napery, gleaming appointments, was foreign to his sight as the décolleté dresses, the white arms and necks. Yet his natural imperturbability stood him bravely in place of sophistication.
“Been fighting fire,” he answered, with his usual deliberation. “Suppose I do look pretty fierce.”
His glance moved inquiringly from the Ravells to his wife.
But she still stood, eyes wide, breath issuing in light gasps from her parted lips. For her also the moment was full of bitterness. There was no time for thought. She only felt—a composite feeling compounded of the misgiving, discontent, humiliation, disappointment, disillusionment of the last few months. It all culminated in that moment, and with it mixed deep shame, remorse for her conduct. Also she had regret on another score. If she had told him, he would at least have been prepared, have achieved a presentable appearance. Now she was taken in her sin! Foul with smoke, soot, the dirt and grime of labor, he was facing her guests.
Starting, she realized that they were waiting, puzzled, for introductions—that is, Kate was puzzled. Ravell was busily employed taking admiring note of Carter’s splendid inches. Poor Helen! She might have been easier in her mind could she have sensed the friendly feeling that inhered in Ravell’s cordial grip.
“We were just deploring the fact that we were not to meet you, Mr. Carter,” he said. “We felt sure of finding you home after the notice we gave Mrs. Carter. We were really quite jealous of your affairs, but now we shall go away satisfied.”
Given a duller man, the word “notice” supplied the possibilities of an unpleasant situation. But though he instantly remembered the letter, Carter gave no sign till he and Helen had passed into their bedroom. Even then he abstained from direct allusions.
“Friends of yourn?” he questioned, as she set out clean clothing.
“Kate is an old school-fellow. Wait; I’ll get you clean towels.” She bustled about, hiding her nervousness from his gray inquisition. “They are on their honey-moon. Going to the Orient—Japan, China, and the island countries. They stayed off a couple of days to see us.”
“To see you,” he corrected.
She colored. Her glance fluttered away from his grave eyes. She hurried again into speech. “Wait, dear! I’ll get you some warm water.”
He refused the service, he who had loved to take anything from her hands. “Thanks. I think the lake fits my case. Give me the towels and I’ll change down there after my swim.”
The meal was finished, and she, with the others, had carried her chair outside before he came swinging back from the lake. He was wearing the store clothes of her misgivings, but the ugly cut could not hide the magnificent sweep of his limbs. She thrilled despite her misery. As she rose to get his dinner, Mrs. Leslie also jumped up.
“Poor man, you must be famished!” she exclaimed. “No, Helen, you are tired. Stay here and entertain the men. Mrs. Ravell and I will wait on Mr. Carter. And you, Mr. Danvers, may act as cookee.”
Thus saved from an uncomfortable téte-à-téte, Helen suffered a greater misery than his accusing presence. While chatting with Ned Ravell, her ears were strained to catch the conversation going on inside. She listened for Carter’s homely locutions, shivering as she pictured his primitive table manners. As a burst of laughter followed his murmured bass, she wondered whether they were laughing with or at him.
She might have been easy, for the laugh was on Danvers. As yet that young gentleman was still in the throes of the sporting fever which invariably assails Englishmen new to the frontier. Any day he might be seen wriggling snakelike on the flat of his belly through mud towards some wary duck, and an enthusiastic eulogium on the shooting qualities of a new Greener gun had drawn from Carter the story of Danvers’ first kill.
“Prairie chicken’s mighty good eating an’ easy shooting,” he remarked, with a sly look at Kate Ravell. “But nothing would satisfy his soaring ambitions but duck. Duck for his, sirree! an’ he blazed away till the firmament hereabouts was powder-marked and riddled. Burned up at least three tons of powder before he got my duck.”
“Your duck?” Danvers protested. “Just hear him, Mrs. Leslie. It was a wild duck that I shot down here by the lake.”
Carter chuckled and went on with his teasing. “I came near being called as a witness to that cruel murder, for I was back-setting the thirty acres down by the lake when I heard a shot an’ a yell. I read it that he’d got himself, an’ was jes’ going after the remains, when up he comes on a hungry lope, gun in one hand and a mallard in the other. The bird was that mussed up its own mother couldn’t have told it from a cocoanut door-mat. Looked like it had made foolish faces at a Gatling; yet he tells me that he gets the unfortunate animal at eighty yards on the wing.”
“You know how close that old gun of mine used to shoot,” Danvers interrupted. “It was choke-bored, Mrs. Ravell. At eighty-yards it would put every shot inside of a three-foot circle.”
“The feather marking looked sort of familiar to me,” Carter went calmly on. “An’ he admits, on cross-examination, that he murders this bird in front of my cabin.”
“What of it?” Danvers eagerly put in. “Wild ducks light any old place.”
“But it jes’ happens that the confiding critter has raised her brood in the sedges there, being encouraged an’ incited thereto by my wife, who throws it bread an’ other pickings. Taking Danvers’ gun-barrel for some new kind of worm, when he pokes it through the sedge she sails right up and is examining the boring thereof, when, bang! she’s blown into a railroad disaster.”
“Don’t believe him, Mrs. Ravell,” Danvers pleaded. “It was a wild duck, and I shot it flying.”
“So if the new gun’s what you say it is,” the tormentor finished, “you’d better to practise on prairie chicken an’ don’t be misled by Mrs. Leslie’s hens.”
“As though I couldn’t tell a hen from a prairie chicken!”
Carter joined in the laugh which Danvers’ indignant remonstrance drew from the women, yet under the laugh, beneath his humorous indifference, lay a sad heart. “She knew they were coming! She didn’t tell me!” Down by the lake he had reasoned the situation out to its cruel conclusion—“She’s ashamed of me!” How it hurt! Yet the flick on the raw served him well in that it set him on his mettle, nerved him to carry off the situation.
He did not try to transcend his limitations, to clog himself with unfamiliar restrictions of speech or manners. But within those limitations he did his best, and did it so well that neither woman was conscious of social difference. He showed none of the bashfulness which might be expected from a frontiersman sitting for the first time at table with fashionable women in dinner-gowns. On the contrary, he admired the pretty dresses, the white arms, the hands that handled the teacups so gracefully; and when he spoke the matter so eclipsed the manner that it is doubtful whether Kate Ravell noticed a single locution. His shrewd common-sense, quaint humor, the quickness with which he grasped a new point of view, and the freshness of his own impressed her with his strong personality. Pleased and amused, she had no time to notice grammatical lapses or small table gaucheries that had irritated Helen by constant repetition.
“He’s delightful,” she told her husband, in a conjugal aside.
In the conversation which ensued after they joined the others outside, Carter also took no mean part. Of things he knew, and these ranged over subjects that were the more interesting because unfamiliar to the town-bred folks, he spoke entertainingly; and on those foreign to his experience he preserved silence. On every common topic his opinion was sound, wholesome. His keen wit punctured several fallacies. The quaint respect of his manner to the women served him as well with the men.
“Big brain,” Ravell told his wife in that conference which all married folk have held since the first pair retired to their bedroom under the stars at the forks of the Euphrates. “That fellow will go far.”
“So gentle and kind,” Kate added. “I think Helen is lucky. Those English people are nice,” she went on, musingly; “but if I were Helen I’d keep an eye on Mrs. Leslie.”
“Yes,” she answered his surprised look, nodding vigorously. “She is in love with Mr. Carter. How do I know?” She sniffed. “Didn’t I see her eyes—the opportunities she made to touch him while handing him things at supper? Helen is safe, though, so long as she treats him properly. He doesn’t care for Mrs. Leslie.”
He shook his head reprovingly. “You shouldn’t make snap judgments, Kate.”
Had he witnessed a little scene that occurred just before the Leslies drove away! Good-byes had been said, and Helen had gone in-doors with her guests. Danvers, who was riding, had galloped away. Then, at the last moment, Leslie remembered that he had left his halters at the stable. While he ran back Carter stood beside the rig. Brilliant northern moonlight showed him Mrs. Leslie’s eyes, dark, dilated, but he ignored their knowledge till she spoke.
“I wouldn’t have done it.”
“Done what?”
His stoicism could not hide the sudden flash of pain. She saw it writhe over his face like the quivering of molten lead ere his features set in stern immobility.
“It is very chivalrous of you.” She smiled bitterly. “But why wear a mask with me?”
“You have the advantage of me, ma’am,” he stiffly answered, and moved round to the ponies’ heads.
Leslie was now returning, but she spoke again, quickly, eagerly, with the concentration of passion. “It is always the way! The more we spurn you the hotter your love, and—” She paused, then, hearing her husband’s foot-fall, whispered: “Vice versa. Remember! I wouldn’t have done it!”
After their departing rattle had died, Carter threw himself on the grass before the house and lay, head on clasped hands, staring up at the moon; and Helen, who was using unnecessary time making a temporary bed, paused and looked out from the open door. The dark figure loomed stern and still as the marble effigy of some crusader. There was something awful in his silence; the soft moonlight quivered around and about him, seemed a sorrowful emanation. Frightened, remorseful, she sat locking and unlocking her fingers. What was he thinking?
Part of his thought was easy to divine. It would be common to any man in his situation—the hurt pride, jealous pain, misgiving, unhappiness, but beyond these was an unknown quantity, the product of his own peculiar individuality. His keen intellect had already analyzed the cause of her shame. He was rough, crude, unpolished! Any man might also have reached that conclusion. It was in the synthesis, the upbuilding of thought from that conclusion, that he branched from the common. He was humble enough in acknowledging his defects. Yet his natural wit showed him that humility would not serve in these premises. Forgiveness for the crime against his personality would not remove the cause of the offence. Far-sighted, he saw down the vista of years his and her love slowly dying of the same similar offences and causes. That, at least, should never be! He had reached a decision before she came creeping out in her night-dress.
“Aren’t you coming to bed, dear?”
He sensed the remorse, sorrow, pity in her voice, but these were not the feelings to move his resolution. Pity! It is the anodyne, the peaceful end of love. Rising, he stretched his great arms and turned towards the stables.
“Where are you going?” she called, sharply, under the urge of sudden fear.
“To turn in on the hay.”
She ran and caught his arm, and turned her pale face up to his. “Why? I have made our bed on the couch. Won’t you come in?”
“No!”
“Why?” she reiterated. “Oh, why?”
“Because it is shame to live together when love has fled.”
She clasped his arm with both hands. “Oh, don’t say that! How can you say it? Who says I do not love you?”
“Yourself.” His weary, hopeless tone brought her tears. “In love there is no shame, an’ you was ashamed of me.”
“I did mean to tell you.” Desperate, she caught his neck. How valuable this love was becoming, now she felt it slipping from her! “I did! But you went away without saying good-bye.”
“There was opportunity, plenty. You could have sent for me.”
His sternness set her trembling. “Then—I thought—I thought—they were only to be here for one day. Such a short visit. I thought they might misjudge—I didn’t want to expose you to hostile criticism.”
“You’ve said it. Love knows no fear. Good-night.”
“Oh!—please—don’t!” she called after him, as he strode away. Pity, woman’s weakness, the conservative instinct that makes against broken ties, these were all behind her cry, and his keen sensibility instantly detected them. He closed the stable door.
According to the canons of romance, it would have been very proper for that jarring echo to have unstoppered the fountains of her love and all things would have come to a proper ending. But, somehow, it did not. After a burst of crying into her lonely pillow, she lay and permitted her mind to hark back over her married life. Hardship, squalor, suffering, misfortune passed in review till she gained back to the days when Molyneux had also paid her court. What share had anger and pique in affecting her decision? Angry pride was, just then, ready to yield them the larger proportion. Later came softer memories. She was troubled as she thought of his generous kindness. Under the thought affection, if not love, revived, and conscience permitted no sleep until she promised to beg forgiveness.
However, circumstance robbed her of the opportunity. Before the Ravells retired, Carter had said good-bye, as he intended to start back for the woods before sunrise. “You needn’t to get up, either,” he had told her. “I’ll take breakfast with Bender.” But now she promised herself that she would rise, get him a hot meal, and then make her peace. But at dawn she was awakened by his wheels, and, running to the door, she was just in time to see him go by. She would have called only, as the cry trembled to her lips, his words of the night before recurred to memory—“Marriage without love is shame!” Suddenly conscious of her night-gear, she shrank as a young girl would from the eye of a stranger, and the chance was gone.
“I’ll tell him when he returns,” she murmured, blushing.
But he did not return; and two days later Bender and Jenny Hines drove up to the door.
In the neatly dressed girl, with hair done on top of her head, it was difficult, indeed, to recognize the forlorn creature whom Bender had picked up on that night trail. Though she was still small—a legacy from her drudging years—she had filled and rounded out into a becoming plumpness. Her pale eyes had deepened, were full of sparkle and color. Two years ago she would have been deemed incapable of the smile she turned on Helen.
“I’m so glad to see you, Mrs. Carter; an’ I’m to stay with you all winter while your husband’s up at the camp. The doctor didn’t want to let me go,” she said, not noting Helen’s surprise, “an’ he wouldn’t to any one but you.”
“The camp? What camp?”
It was Jenny’s turn to stare. As for Bender, he gaped, while his colors rivalled those of a cooked beet. Sweating under her questions, he looked off and away to escape the spectacle of her white misery as he explained Carter’s new enterprise and its glorious possibilities. He finished with an attempt at comfort.
“I ain’t surprised that he didn’t tell you. I allow he was going to spring it on you all hatched and full-fledged. Me an’ Jenny here was real stupid to give it away. Might just as well have said as she’d come on a little visit. I allow he’ll be hopping mad at the pair of us. An’ now I’ll have to be going after the Cougar. He’ll do the chores till we kin get you a hired man.”
If the fiction eased the situation, it deceived neither her nor them. Having, a week later, delivered the new hired man, a strong young Swede, Bender delivered his real opinion with dubious head-shakings while carting the Cougar away. “Don’t it beat hell, Cougar? Him that straight an’ good, her that sweet an’ purty, yet they don’t hitch. It’s discouraging.”
“Well,” the cynic grunted, “take warning.”
Bender eyed him wrathfully. “Now what in hell do you mean?”
But he blushed under the Cougar’s meaning glance.
“I reckon he’ll drop in on his way up,” Bender had assured Helen. But he did not. She yet allowed herself to hope—hoped on while the weeks drew into months, each of which brought a check for household expenses. Soon the snows blanketed the prairies; heavy frost vied with the cold at her heart; and he had not come. Jenny’s reticence kept the truth from leaking out; but such things may not be hid, and about Christmas-time it was whispered through the settlements that Carter had left his wife.