CHAPTER XXV
THE ONLY MEANS
Alison sat one afternoon in the shadow of a pile of sheaves in Farquhar's harvest field. She had a little leisure, and it was unpleasantly hot in the wooden house. There was some sewing in her hand, but even in the shade the light was trying and she leaned back languidly among the warm straw with half-closed eyes. Two men were talking some distance behind her as they pitched up the rustling sheaves, and the tramp of horses' feet among the stubble and the rattle of a binder which she knew Farquhar was driving drew steadily nearer. Presently another beat of hoofs broke in, and a minute or two later Hall rode past, looking very hot, apparently without seeing her. Then the rattle of the binder ceased and she heard the newcomer greet Farquhar.
"If you've got one of those bent-end-spanners you could let me have I'd be glad," he said. "I've mislaid mine somehow, and there's a loose nut I can't get at making trouble on my binder."
Farquhar sent his hired man for one and Hall referred to the grain.
"So you have made a start. Looks quite a heavy crop. Good and ripe, too, isn't it?"
"We put the binder in yesterday," answered Farquhar. "I'd have done it earlier only that I sent Pete over to Thorne's place for a few days after you left him."
"I was kind of sorry I had to leave. He's surely going to be beaten. I looked in on him yesterday."
Alison became suddenly intent. She drew her light skirt closer about her, for she did not wish it to catch the men's eyes and betray her, as she thought it probable that they would speak to each other unreservedly and she would hear the actual truth about Thorne. When she had questioned Farquhar he had answered her in general terms, avoiding any very definite particulars, and she now strained her ears to catch his reply to Hall.
"I was afraid of it after what Pete told me," he said. "I would have helped him more if I could have managed it, but I can't let a big crop like this stand over when I've bills to meet."
"That," declared Hall, "is just how I'm fixed, though I stayed with him as long as I could. The trouble is that he hasn't been able to hire a man since I left him. There seem to be mighty few of the Ontario boys coming in this season, and so far they've been snapped up farther back along the line."
"Has he tried any of the men who had their crops hailed out west of the creek?"
"They cleared as soon as they saw they had no harvest left. Most of them are out track-grading on the branch line, and I heard the rest went East. Mavy's surely up against it; he was figuring last evening that even if the weather held he'd be most a month behind."
"Then I'm afraid he'll have to give the place up. Nevis will come down on him the day that payment's due."
"Couldn't he raise the money somehow, for a month?" Hall inquired.
"It's scarcely likely. I can't lend him any, with wheat at present figure, and Hunter, who has already guaranteed him a thousand dollars, is very tightly fixed. Besides Mavy couldn't expect anything more from him. It wouldn't be much use going to a bank, either. With the bottom dropping out of the market they're getting scared of wheat, and he has nothing to offer them but a crop that isn't reaped, with Grantly's note calling for most of it."
"Then I guess he has just got to quit. Hunter would no doubt have lent him a binder and a couple of hired men, but he has them busy trying to straighten up his hailed crop and cut patches of it."
"It's a pity," Farquhar assented in a regretful voice. "It will hurt Mavy to give the place up."
The man arrived with the spanner and Alison heard Hall ride away. When the clash and rattle of the binder began again she lay still for a long time beneath the sheaves. The men's conversation had made it clear that Thorne would shortly be involved in disaster, and that alone was painful news, though by comparison with another aspect of the matter it was of minor importance. The man loved her, and it was for that reason he had undertaken this most unfortunate farming venture. Everybody seemed to know it, though he had never told her what was in his mind, and she had been content to wait. Now, however, she had no doubt that she loved him, and he would, it seemed, shortly go away and vanish altogether beyond her reach – at least, unless something should very promptly be done. She knew he would not claim her while he was an outcast and a ruined man.
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.
"It is because it is so precious that I shrink from involving you in the disaster that is hanging over me. I am a ruined, discredited man, and in a few more weeks I will be driven out of my homestead without a dollar. It will be three or four years at least before I can struggle to my feet again."
"Is that so very dreadful, Mavy?" Alison smiled. "I almost think that in the things that count the most many of you are, after all, more bound by traditions than we are. Your wildest flight was the driving about the prairie with a load of patent medicines, and now your imagination is bounded by a homestead and household comforts. You could teach a woman to love you, and then go away, driven by some fantastic point of honor, because you could not realize that her views might be wider than yours."
"I could hardly suppose that you would care to live in a wagon."
"I did it once – and it was not so very dreadful. I really think, if it were needful, I could do it again."
She leaned forward toward him.
"It would be very much worse, Mavy, if you went away and left me behind."
At length he came toward her and seized both her hands.
"Dear," he cried, "I have tried to do what I felt I ought – and now I'm not sorry that I find I'm not strong enough. I can't tell you how I want you – but I'm afraid you could not face what you would have to bear with me."
"Try!" said Alison simply.
He drew her to him with an exultant laugh.
"I've done what I could, and it seems I've failed. Now let Nevis turn me out and I'll almost thank him. After all, there are many worse places than a camp beside the wagon in the birch bluff."
Alison was not at all convinced that it would end in that, and indeed she did not mean it to if she could help it; but in another moment she felt his arms about her and his lips hot upon her face, and it was half an hour later when they left the homestead together. The sun had dipped, and the vast dim plain stretched away before them under a vault of fading blue, but she drove very slowly while Thorne walked beside the buggy for almost a league.
As a result of this, it was very late when she reached the homestead, and she was relieved when Mrs. Farquhar came out alone as she got down. The light fell upon the girl's face as she approached the doorway, and her companion flashed a smiling glance at her.
"I suppose you have been to Thorne's place?"
"Yes," answered Alison quietly. "I am going to marry him."
Mrs. Farquhar kissed her.
"It's very good news. Still, from what I know of Mavy and how he's situated, I'm a little astonished that you were able to arrange it."
"Why do you put it that way?" Alison asked with a start.
Her companion laughed.
"My dear, I'm only glad that you had sense enough not to let him go. That man would be afraid of even a cold air blowing on you. Anyway, you have got the one husband I would most gladly have given you to."
Then she drew Alison into the house and called to Farquhar.
"Harry, take the horse in, and it isn't necessary for you to hurry back."
She drew Alison out a chair and sat down close beside her.
"The first thing you have to do is to drive over and see Florence Hunter. Her husband's the only person who can pull Mavy out of this trouble."
"I had thought of that."
"I believe it's necessary. We can't let Mavy be turned out now, and if he won't ask a favor of a man who would grant it willingly if he could, somebody must do it for him."
Then she laid her hand caressingly on the girl's shoulder.
"I haven't been so pleased for a very long while. Keep a good courage. We'll find some means of outwitting Nevis."
CHAPTER XXVI
OPEN CONFESSION
It was about the middle of the afternoon when Alison reached the Hunter homestead, and she was slightly astonished when, on inquiring for Florence, a maid informed her that the latter was busy and could not be with her for some minutes. Alison had imagined from what she had seen on previous visits that in the warm weather Florence invariably spent her afternoons reclining in a canvas chair on the veranda. A couple of chairs stood on it when she arrived, and after the maid had gone she drew one back into the shadow, and sitting down looked out across the great stretch of grain in front of the house.
All round the edge of it there were scattered men and teams, but they were moving very slowly, and almost every minute the clatter of one or another of the binders ceased and she saw stooping figures busy in front of the machine. Though she could not make out exactly what they were doing, the state of the harvest-field seemed to explain why the delays were unavoidable. Great patches of the wheat lay prone; the part that stood upright looked tangled and torn, and there were wide stretches from which it had partially disappeared, leaving only ragged stubble mixed with crumpled straw. Alison had, however, seen other crops that had been wholly wiped out by the scourging hail. She waited about a quarter of an hour before Florence appeared, looking rather hot and dressed with unusual plainness.
"You'll have to excuse me for keeping you, but I'm glad you came," she said. "I've been busy since seven o'clock this morning, and now that I've a little leisure it's a relief to sit down."
A gleam of amusement crept into Alison's eyes, and her companion evidently noticed it.
"It is rather a novelty in my case," she laughed. "On the other hand, there's no doubt that the exertion is necessary. The waste that has been going on in this homestead is positively alarming."
It cost Alison an effort to preserve a becoming gravity. Florence, who had presided over the place for several years, spoke as if the fact she mentioned, which had been patent to those who visited her for a considerable time, had only dawned upon her very recently.
"You are trying to set things straight?" she suggested.
"It threatens to prove a difficult task, but I'm making the attempt while I feel equal to it; and there's a certain interest even in looking into household accounts. For instance, I had an idea this morning that promised to save me three or four dollars a month, but when I mentioned it to Elcot he only grinned. There are one or two respects in which I'm afraid he's a little extravagant."
Alison laughed outright. The idea that Florence, who had hitherto squandered money with both hands, should trouble herself about the saving of three dollars and complain of her self-denying husband's extravagance was irresistibly amusing.
"When did the desire to investigate affairs first get hold of you?" she asked.
"I believe that it was when I came back from Toronto," answered Florence thoughtfully. "Afterward we had the hail, and it became clear at once that there would have to be some cutting down of our expenses." Her face grew suddenly anxious as she glanced toward the grain. "That," she added, "ought to explain why the subject's an interesting one to me."
Alison was somewhat puzzled. There were signs of a change in her companion, who hitherto had, so far at least as she had noticed, taken only a very casual interest in her husband's affairs.
"Yes," she replied, "it does. I was very sorry when I heard about it."
Florence made a little abrupt gesture, as though in dismissal of the topic.
"What brought you over? You haven't been very often."
It was difficult to answer offhand, and Alison proceeded circuitously.
"You and I were pretty good friends in England, weren't we?"
"Of course," assented Florence. "You stood by me when your mother turned against me, and I've always had an idea that you suffered for it. We'll admit the fact. What comes next?"
Her manner was abrupt, but that was not infrequently the case, and Alison, who was fighting for her lover, was not readily daunted.
"Well," she said, "I have never troubled you for any favors in return."
Florence regarded her in a rather curious fashion.
"No," she admitted, "you haven't. You made no claim on me, as, perhaps, you were entitled to do, when you first came out here. In fact, I have once or twice felt slightly vexed with you because you went to Mrs. Farquhar."
Alison smiled as she remembered that her companion had not shown the least desire to prevent her doing the thing she now resented.
"Then there's a favor that I must ask at last; but first of all I'd better tell you that I'm going to marry Leslie Thorne."
"Mavy Thorne!" Florence gazed at her in open wonder. "I heard a whisper or two that seemed to point to the possibility of your doing something of the kind, but I resolutely refused to believe it."
"Why?"
Florence laughed.
"Oh, in half a dozen ways it's ludicrous. If you really mean it, you are as absurd as he is."
Alison rose with an air of quiet dignity.
"If you are quite convinced of that, there is nothing more to be said. You couldn't expect me to appreciate your attitude."
Her companion laid a restraining hand on her arm as she was about to move away.
"Sit down! If I vexed you, I'm sorry; but you really shouldn't be so quick in temper. Besides, you shouldn't have flung the news at me in that startling fashion. After all, I've no doubt he has something to recommend him. Most of them have a few good qualities which now and then become evident when you don't expect them."
She paused and looked up at Alison with a smile in which there was a hint of tenderness.
"For instance, it has been dawning on me of late that there's a good deal that's rather nice in Elcot. Now try to be reasonable, and tell me what the trouble is."
Alison's indignation dissipated. It was, after all, difficult to be angry with Florence, and she supplied her with a brief account of how Thorne was situated. Her companion listened with more interest than she had fancied her capable of displaying, and when Alison stopped she made a sign of comprehension.
"You want me to ask Elcot to send him over some of our men? I wish I could – I almost feel I owe you that – but it's difficult. Elcot's trying desperately to save the remnant of his crop. He has been very badly hit."
Alison sat silent in tense anxiety. She could not urge Florence to do anything that would clearly be to her husband's detriment, and she did not see how Hunter could help Thorne without neglecting his own harvest. Then her companion turned to her again.
"I quite realize that Thorne will be turned out unless he clears off the loan, but you haven't mentioned the name of the creditor who wishes to ruin him."
"It's Nevis."
An ominous sparkle crept into Florence's eyes, and her face grew hard.
"Then I'll try to explain it all to Elcot to-night, and if he can drive off Nevis by any means that won't cost him too great a sacrifice I think you can count on its being done."
Alison felt inclined to wonder why the mention of Nevis's part in the affair had had such an effect on her companion, but that, after all, did not seem a very important point, and when she drove away half an hour later she was in an exultant mood. When she had gone, Florence supervised the preparations for the men's supper, and after the meal was over she stopped Hunter as he was going out again through the veranda.
"If you can wait for a few minutes I have something to tell you," she said. "To begin with, Alison Leigh is going to marry Thorne."
Hunter did not look much astonished.
"I think Mavy has made a wise choice, but I'm very much afraid there's trouble in front of them," he said.
"That," returned Florence, "is exactly what I meant to speak about. Alison was here this afternoon, and she mentioned it to me. I want to save them as much as I can."
Hunter's face remained expressionless. It was the first time, so far as he could remember, that Florence had concerned herself about any other person's difficulties.
"Well," he asked gravely, "how do you propose to set about it?"
"In the first place, I thou