"Eddie!"
"You must have heard--why, I remember telling you about it myself--about this mustard, this weed. We farmers in Canada have three enemies to fight: frost, hail and weed."
Mrs. Sharp confirmed his words with a despairing nod of her head.
"We was hailed out last year," she said. "Lost our whole crop. Never got a dollar for it. And now! If we lose it this year, too--why, we might just as well quit and be done with it."
"When it gets into your crop," Marsh explain for Nora's benefit, "you've got to report it. If you don't, one of the neighbors is sure to. And then they send an inspector along, and if he condemns it, why you just have to destroy the whole crop, and all your year's work goes for nothing. You're lucky, in that case, if you've got a bit of money laid by in the bank and can go on till next year when the next crop comes along."
"We've only got a quarter-section and we've got five children. It's not much money you can save then."
"But----" began Nora.
"Are they out with the inspector now?" asked Marsh.
"Yes. He came out from Prentice this morning early."
"This will be a bad job for Frank."
"Yes, but he hasn't got the mouths to feed that we have. I can't think what's to become of us. He can hire out again."
Nora's face flushed.
"I--I wonder why he hasn't told me anything about it. I asked him, only this morning, what was troubling him. I was sure there was something, but he said not," she said sadly.
"Oh, I guess he's always been in the habit of keeping his troubles to himself, and you haven't taught him different yet."
Nora was about to make a sharp retort, but realizing that her good neighbor was half beside herself with anxiety and nervousness, she said nothing. A fact which the unobservant Eddie noted with approval.
"Well," he said as cheerfully as he could, "you must hope for the best, Mrs. Sharp."
"Sid says we've only got it in one place. But perhaps he's only saying it, so as I shouldn't worry. But you know what them inspectors are; they don't lose nothin' by it. It don't matter to them if you starve all winter!"
Suddenly she began to cry. Great sobs wracked her heavy frame. The big tears rolled down her cheeks. Nora had never seen her give way before, even when she talked of the early hardships she had endured, or of the little one she had lost. She was greatly moved, for this good, brave woman who had already suffered so much.
"Oh, don't--don't cry, dear Mrs. Sharp. After all, it may all turn out right."
"They won't condemn the whole crop unless it's very bad, you know," Marsh reminded her. "Too many people have got their eyes on it; the machine agent and the loan company."
Mrs. Sharp had regained her self-control in sufficient measure to permit of her speaking. She still kept making little dabs at her eyes with a red bandanna handkerchief, and her voice broke occasionally.
"What with the hail that comes and hails you out, and the frost that kills your crop just when you're beginning to count on it, and now the weed!" She had to stop again for a moment. "I can't bear any more. If we lose this crop, I won't go on. I'll make Sid sell out, and we'll go back home. We'll take a little shop somewhere. That's what I wanted to do from the beginning. But Sid--Sid always had his heart set on farming."
"But you couldn't go back now," said Nora, her face aglow, "you couldn't. You never could be happy or contented in a little shop after the life you've had out here. And think; if you'd stayed back in England, you'd have always been at the beck and call of somebody else. And you own your land. You couldn't do that back in England. Every time you come out of your door and look at the growing wheat, aren't you proud to think that it's all yours? I know you are. I've seen it in your face."
"You don't know all that I've had to put up with. When the children came, only once did I have a doctor. All the rest of the times, Sid was all the help I had. I might as well have been an animal! I wish I'd never left home and come to this country, that I do!"
"How can you say that? Look at your children, how strong and healthy they are. And think what a future they will have. Why, they'll be able to help you both in your work soon. You've given them a chance; they'd never have had a chance back home. You know that."
"Oh, it's all very well for them. They'll have it easy, I know that. Easier than their poor father and mother ever had. But we've had to pay for it all in advance, Sid and me. They'll never know what we paid."
"Ah, but don't you see that it is because you were the first?" said Nora, going over to her and laying a friendly hand upon her arm. Mrs. Sharp was, of course, too preoccupied with her own troubles to realize, even if she had known that the question of Nora's return to England had come up, that her friend was doing some special pleading for herself, against herself. But to her brother, who years before had in a lesser degree gone through the same searching experience, the cause of her warmth was clear. He nodded his approval.
"It's bitter work, opening up a new country, I realize that," Nora went on, her eyes dark with earnestness.
Unknown to herself, she had a larger audience, for Hornby and Frank stood silently in the open door. Marsh saw them, and shook his head slightly. He wanted Nora to finish.
"What if it is the others who reap the harvest? Don't you really believe that those who break the ground are rewarded in a way that the later comers never dream of? I do."
"She's right there," broke in Marsh. "I shall never forget, Mrs. Sharp, what I felt when I saw my first crop spring up--the thought that never since the world began had wheat grown on that little bit of ground before. Oh, it was wonderful! I wouldn't go back to England now, to live, for anything in the world. I couldn't breathe."
"You're a man. You have the best of it, and all the credit."
"Not with everyone," said Nora. She fell on her knees beside the elder woman's chair and stroked her work-roughened old hand.
"The outsiders don't know. You mustn't blame them, how could they? It's only those who've lived on the prairie who could know that the chief burden of the hardships of opening up a new country falls upon the women. But the men who are the husbands, they know, and in their hearts they give us all credit."
"I guess they do, Mrs. Sharp," said Marsh earnestly.
Mrs. Sharp smiled gratefully on Nora through her tears.
"Thank you for speaking so kindly to me, my dear. I know that you are right in every blessed thing you've said. You must excuse me for being a bit downhearted for the moment. The fact is, I'm that nervous that I hardly know what I'm saying. But you've done me no end of good."
"That's right." Nora got slowly to her feet. "Sid and Frank will be here in a minute or two, I am sure."
"And you're perfectly right, both of you," Mrs. Sharp repeated. "I couldn't go back and live in England again. If we lose our crop, well, we must hang on some way till next year. We shan't starve, exactly. A person's got to take the rough with the smooth; and take it by and large, it's a good country."
"Ah, now you're talking more like yourself, the self that used to cheer me up when----"
Turning, she saw her husband standing in the doorway.
"Frank!"
He was looking at her with quite a new expression. How long had he been there? Had he heard all she had been saying to Mrs. Sharp, carried away by the emotion aroused by the secret conflict within her own heart? She both hoped and feared that he had.
"Where's Sid?" said Mrs. Sharp, starting to her feet.
"Why, he's up at your place. Hulloa, Ed. Saw you coming along in the rig earlier in the morning. But I was surprised to find Reg here. Didn't recognize him so far away in his store clothes."
"Must have been a pleasant surprise for you," said Hornby with conviction.
"What's happened? Tell me what's happened."
"Mrs. Sharp came on here because she was too anxious to stay at home," Nora explained.
"Oh, you're all right."
"We are?" Mrs. Sharp gave a sobbing gasp of relief.
; "Only a few acres got to go. That won't hurt you."
"Thank God for that! And it's goin' to be the best crop we ever had. It's the finest country in the world!" Her face was beaming.
"You'd better be getting back," warned Taylor. "Sid's taken the inspector up to give him some dinner."
"He hasn't!" said Mrs. Sharp indignantly. "If that isn't just like a man." She made a gesture condemning the sex. "It's a mercy there's plenty in the house. But I must be getting along right away," she bustled.
"But you mustn't think of walking all that way back in the hot sun," expostulated Nora. "There's Eddie's rig. Reggie, here, will drive you over."
"Oh, thank you, kindly. I'm not used to walking very much, you know, and I'd be all tuckered out by the time I got back home. Good-by, all. Good afternoon, Mrs. Taylor."
"Good afternoon. Reggie, you won't mind driving Mrs. Sharp back. It's only just a little over a mile."
"Not a bit of it," said Hornby good-naturedly.
"I'll come and help you put the mare in," said Marsh, starting to follow Hornby and Mrs. Sharp down the path.
"I guess it's a relief to you, now you know," he called back to his brother-in-law.
"Terrible. I want to have a talk with you presently, Ed. I'll go on out with him, I guess," he said, turning to his wife.
She nodded silently. She was grateful to him for leaving her alone for a time. They would have much to say to each other a little later.
"Hold on, Ed, I'm coming."
"Right you are!"
He ran lightly down the path where his brother-in-law stood waiting for him.
She stood for a long moment looking down at the innocent-looking little blossoms on her table. And they could cause such heartbreak and desolation, ranking, as engines of destruction, with the frost and the hail! Could make such seasoned and tried women as Mrs. Sharp weep and bring the gray look of apprehension into the eyes of a man like her husband. Those innocent-looking little flowers!
What must he have felt as he saw her arranging them so light-heartedly in her pudding-dish that morning. And yet, rather than mar her pleasure, he had choked back the impulse to speak. Yes, that was like him. For a moment they blurred as she looked at them. She checked her inclination to throw them into the stove, to burn them to ashes so that they could work their evil spells no more. Later on, she would do so. But she wanted them there until he returned.
She looked about the little room. Yes, it was pretty and homelike, deserving all the nice things people said about it. And what a real pleasure she had had in transforming it, from the dreadful little place it was when she first saw it, into what it was now. Not that she could ever have worked the miracle alone.
She smiled sadly to herself. How all her thoughts, like homing pigeons, had the one goal!
And how proud he was of it all. With what delighted, almost childlike interest, he had watched each little change. And how he had acquiesced in every suggestion and helped her to plan and carry out the things she could not have done alone.
She lived again those long winter evenings when, snug and warm, the grim cruelty of the storms shut out, she had read aloud to him while he worked on making the chairs.
How long would it keep its prettiness with no woman's eye to keep its jealous watch on it? The process of reversion to its old desolation would be gradual. The curtains, the bright ribands, the cushions would slowly become soiled and faded. And there would be no one here to renew them. For a moment, the thought of asking Mrs. Sharp to look after them came into her mind. But, no. She certainly had enough to do. And, besides--the thought thrilled her with delight-- he would not like having anyone else to touch them!
And she? She would be back in that old life where such simple little things were a commonplace, a matter of course. And what interest would they be to her? She could see herself ripping the ribands from an old hat to tie back curtains for Mrs. Hubbard! Certainly that excellent lady would be astonished if she suggested doing anything of the sort, and small wonder. She hired the proper people to keep her house in order just as she was going to hire her.
She found it in her heart to be sorry for Mrs. Hubbard. She had always had her money. The joy of these little miracles of contrivance had never been hers. She had bought her home. She had never, in all her pampered life, made one.
Home! What a desolating word it could be to the homeless. She knew. Since her far-off childhood, she had never called a place 'home' till now. And just as the word began to take on a new meaning, she was going to leave it! Had anyone told her a few short months ago, on the night that she had first seen what she had inwardly called a hovel, that she would ever leave it with any faintest feeling of regret, she would have called him mad. Regret! why the thought of leaving tore her very heartstrings.
What if it had been only a few short months that had passed since then? One's life is not measured by the ticking of a clock, but by emotion and feeling. She had crowded more emotion into these few short months than in all the rest of her dull, uneventful life put together.
Fear, terror, hatred, murderous rage, bitter humiliation, she had felt them all within the small compass of these four walls. And greatest of all--why try to deceive her own heart any longer--here she had known love. She had fought off the acknowledgment of this the crowning experience and humiliation as long as she could. She had called on her pride, that pride which had never before failed her. And now, to herself, she had to acknowledge that she was beaten.
They were all against her. Her own brother had spoken, only a few moments ago, of her marriage as horrible. "A girl like you and a hired man!" She could hear him now. And he had spoken of her leaving as a matter of course. He couldn't have done it if he had cared. He liked the comforts that a woman brings to a house, the little touches that no man's hand can give, that a woman, even as unskillful as she, brings about instinctively, that was all. Almost any other woman could do as well. He did not prize her for herself.
And she would go back to England and, as Hornby had gleefully said, no one need ever know. She would have a place, on sufferance, in other people's homes. The only change that the year would have made in her life would be that the check in her pocket, safely invested, might save her eventually, when she was too old to serve as a companion, from being dependant on actual charity. And to all outward intents and purposes, the year would be as if it had never been.
"In six months, all you've gone through here will seem nothing but a hideous dream," her brother had promised her. Was there ever a man since the world began that understood a woman! A dream! The only time in her life that she had really lived. No, all the rest of her life might be of the stuff that dreams are made on, but not this. And like a sleep-walker, dead to all sensation, she must go through with it.
And she was not yet thirty. All of her father's family--and she was physically the daughter of her father, not of her mother--lived to such a great age. In all human probability there would be at least fifty years of life left to her. Fifty years with all that made life worth living behind one!
She supposed he would eventually get a divorce. She remembered to have heard that such things were easy out here, not like it was in England. And he was a man who would be sure to marry again, he would want a family.
And it was some other woman who would be the mother of his children!
The wave of passion that swept her now, made up of bitter regret, of longing and of jealousy, overwhelmed her as never before.
She had been pacing the room up and down, up and down, stopping now and then to touch some little familiar object with a touch that was a caress.
But at this last thought, she sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands.
The storm of weeping which shook her had nearly spent itself, when she heard steps coming toward the house, a step that her heart had known for many a day. Drying her eyes quickly, she went to the window and made a pretense of looking out that he might not see her tear-stained face. She made a last call on her pride and s
trength to carry her through the coming interview. He should never know what leaving cost her; that she promised herself.
CHAPTER XVIII
"Ed drove over with Reg and Emma; I guess he won't be very long. There was something he wanted to say to old man Sharp that he'd forgot about."
"Then you didn't get your talk with him?"
She was glad of that. It was better to have their own talk first. But as it had been he who had broached the subject of her leaving, it was he who must reopen it.
"No, but I guess anything I've got to say to him will keep till he gets back. Ed's thinking of buying a clearing-machine that's for sale over Prentice way."
"Yes, he told me."
Without turning her head, she could tell that he was looking around for the matches. He never could remember that they were kept in a jar over on the shelf back of the stove. He was going to smoke his pipe, of course. When men were nervous about anything they always flew to tobacco. Women were denied that poor consolation. But she, too, felt the necessity of having something to occupy her hands. She went back to the table, and taking some of Frank's thick woolen socks from her basket, sat down and began mechanically to darn them. She purposely placed herself so that he could only see her profile. Even then, he would see that her eyes were still red; she hadn't had time to bathe them.
"I suppose I look a sight, but poor Mrs. Sharp was so upset! She broke down and cried and of course I've been crying, too. I'm so thankful it's turned out all right for her. Poor thing, I never saw her in such a state!"
"They've got five children to feed. I guess it would make a powerful lot of difference to them," he said quietly.
"I wish you'd told me all about it before. I felt that something was worrying you, and I didn't know what." There was a pause. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"If I saved the crop, there didn't seem any use fussing, and if I didn't, you'd know soon enough."
"How could you bear to let me put those dreadful flowers here in the house?" she said, pointing to the bowl on the table.
The Land of Promise: A Comedy in Four Acts (1922) Page 18