Читать книгу Our Daily Bread - Frederick Philip Grove - Страница 5

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John Elliot senior, fifty-five years old, small, slender, grey of hair and beard, but carrying himself erectly, clad in a grey suit--he despised overalls--was crossing his sloping yard to the barn which stood north-east of the house, higher up on the bare hill-side, separated from the plantations about the dwelling by a dry gully. He was going to hitch a horse to the buggy; for his wife was getting ready to call on Mary, her third-oldest daughter who lived in town.

Halfway up the slope John Elliot stopped and looked back, allowing his troubled eyes to survey the yard and the fields to south and west.

The yard occupied the north-west corner of the homestead. The part surrounding the dwelling was sheltered by young poplar trees planted by Mrs. Elliot some fifteen years ago.

Opposite, across the road--it was still a mere trail--a second yard faced it, enclosed by the straggling, low buildings--stable, granary, shack--of his oldest son's homestead. The farms comprised three hundred and twenty acres each; for east and west of the homesteads, properly speaking, stretched two "preemptions." This was the short-grass country of the new province of Saskatchewan; a half section of land was considered the least on which a farmer could make a living.

In fact, John junior, still only twenty-four years old, had not found even that enough. The spirit of this new west possessed him, craving vast and ever vaster spaces. He had done shallow breaking over large fields; and, garnering, by sheer luck, according to his father, two or three crops in succession, he had first rented, then bought a third quarter. He had hardly done any plowing since. He seeded on stubble land, scratching it, with the disk, into the semblance of a seed-bed. This year, according to his father, he was reaping what he had sown. It was a dry summer; his grain, though it was the end of July, stood no more than three or four inches high, ripe or dried out. Everywhere the brown, drab earth showed, over the bare clay hills, between the thin rows of scraggy, yellow wheat.

In this moment of survey John Elliot senior's eye swept south. In a long "draw" or hollow his own field stretched from west to east. Even there the grain stood none too thickly; but it was two and a half feet high and, though headed, in spite of the unbroken drought of five weeks still green: eighty acres, on a fallowed field.

"You can't fool the land!" John Elliot muttered as he turned and proceeded to the barn.

The mere fact that his son was farming his own land was contrary to his wishes. Six years ago, when John junior had become entitled to file on a homestead, he had done so against his father's protest who wanted him to remain on his own farm, seeing that it would be his one day. Ever since, his father had been critical and still more morose than was his habit. That his sons-in-law went their own way was in the nature of things; but that his flesh and blood left him was a source of sorrow.

For the last thirty-two years, ever since, on the death of his father whose name had also been John Elliot, he had left the original homestead of the Elliots in the Red River valley in Southern Manitoba, John Elliot senior, a thinker, had lived a life of introspection, dreams, and ideas. He and his young wife had gone to what was then the Territory of Assiniboia, to settle in a country which was like the land of sun-set, bare, naked prairie hills, sun-baked, rain-washed, devoid of all the comforts of even slightly older civilisations, devoid, at the time, even of the consolation of human neighbourhood. Together they had seen the settlement grow: very slowly, almost hesitatingly. Their first task had been, not so much to raise crops as to produce what would ensure them against starvation. They had had some means, though; a few thousand dollars accumulated by careful, painstaking economy. They had built a small, shack-like house to which, through the decades, they had added room after room and a second storey till now, painted grey with green trimmings, it stood the largest and most commodious dwelling of the whole district outside of the towns, holding eight rooms. The barn was a model building of its kind. Not even an agricultural college would have needed to be ashamed of it. The shed sheltered the best implements which money could buy, kept in a state of repair which ensured them a term of life and usefulness considerably beyond that of the equipment of an average farm. The hen-houses, south-east of the dwelling, were of the open type, their south walls consisting of canvas. The stock kept was pure-bred, home-raised; no beef was ever sold for meat, always for breeding purposes.

John Elliot was a dreamer; but his dreams had a way of coming true. Far more important to him than his dreams of economic prosperity had been his one great dream of family life.

When, thirty years ago, before going west, he had wooed and won that woman of women, his wife, he had done so with one single object in view: that of securing to himself the mother of his children. In the course of these many years twelve of them had arrived. Two had died; ten were living. Four great afflictions had visited him, aging him before his time: a long illness of Mrs. Elliot's, the deaths of those two little beings in infancy, and the fact that Henry, the second oldest of his sons, as he grew up, had mentally remained a child. He had been extraordinarily sober by temperament; and few people except his wife had therefore been able to see how much he had been affected by these disasters. Yet, on the whole, he had not been disappointed in his particular dream; he had succeeded in raising a large family honourably. His living children, in the order of their birth, comprised, first of all, the three oldest daughters, Gladys, Henrietta, Mary; next John, the oldest son, separated from Mary by an interval of four years--it was at that time that his wife had been ill, after the two unsuccessful births; three more girls, Cathleen, Isabel, Margaret; and finally three boys, Henry, the weak-minded one, Norman, and Arthur, the latter being at present thirteen years old.

As these had grown up--Gladys, the first born, was thirty now--his old dream, that of raising a large family honourably, had been replaced, slowly and imperceptibly, by a new one: that of seeing his children settled about him as the children of the patriarchs of Israel were settled about their fathers. A beginning had been made ten years ago: Mary, the third-oldest girl had been married to Fred Sately, a Manitoba teacher who, however, had shortly after abandoned his profession in order to move west and to go into trade; he was now living in Sedgeby, the small town which, with the coming of the railroad, had sprung up four miles north of the farms. Gladys, the oldest, had, a year later, moved to a homestead sixteen miles north of Sedgeby: there, a young druggist, also from Manitoba, had settled down, admittedly drawn by the desire to take Gladys home into his shack as his wife. John Elliot never knew how this latter connection had been brought about; the demand of Frank Bramley had, to him, come as a complete surprise. It had been different with Fred Sately to whom he had deliberately opened his house, for above all classes of men, even above the farmer, he respected teachers and preachers. Yet, curiously, that admission of Fred Sately into the family circle had, at the time, led to one of the very few differences of opinion which had, in more than thirty years, arisen between John Elliot and his wife. Mrs. Elliot had objected to him on two grounds: Fred Sately was sixteen years older than Mary; and, according to her, he had been lacking in worldly ambition.

Now, at the present time, in the year 1906, when the second group of girls--Cathleen, Isabel, Margaret--were growing into marriageable age, Cathleen being twenty-two, Margaret nineteen, with Henrietta, the second-oldest of the first group, twenty-nine years of age, still unmarried, a fifth great sorrow was preparing itself: Mrs. Elliot was failing and plainly preparing to leave earthly scenes. Many times, during the last few years, John Elliot had urged her--in few words, for he was a silent man--to let him call in what human knowledge and skill was available; but she, in an unconquerable aversion to physical examinations, had invariably declined. Her illness, little defined, mysterious, hovered over the house like a threat, felt by her children no less than by her husband.

As he went about his work, harnessing and hitching up the old horse, Dolly, which his wife was going to drive, thoughts flitted to and fro in John Elliot's brain: thoughts which, through many repetitions in many years, had become so familiar that they were linked by a sort of automatic association and did not need any longer to be elaborated: a mere adumbration sufficed to add link to link.

As ever, these thoughts concerned his children.

He remembered how, ten years ago, when, one Sunday, at dinner, Fred Sately had been received into the family, he, John Elliot, though he had encouraged the connection, yet had resented it. That broad, quiet man with the hanging, black moustache and the almost bald head, by entering the family circle had seemed to break it. Into all future relations he had seemed to introduce a new, unknown element. John Elliot had felt as if he were asked to assume a responsibility without being fully acquainted with a new factor on which the issues depended. How right he had been! The issues were only now defining themselves. He had, then, defended himself against the foreboding that, by his child, he was being stampeded into a new phase of his life. Now, he was being rushed along an unknown path, by that very man whom he had half encouraged in his suit.

Gladys, the oldest daughter, ten years ago a plump, pretty girl of twenty, and yet even then in many ways the image of her father, had been the next to leave the parental house. She, too, had gone a path not chosen by him, her father, and hardly by herself.

The image of her father! That thought released another train of associations.

Thirty years ago, when Gladys' birth had been imminent, he and his wife had one day spoken of the great mystery involved in the coming of children. To him, John Elliot, his children, still unborn, had seemed to be a re-birth, a re-creation of himself. In them, his ideas and ideals would be multiplied; they would convert that of his dreams into reality which he himself might fall short of realising to the full. They would be a means of multiplying his own personality.

Yet, as he had felt the slight antagonism in the thought of Martha, his wife, then herself a young girl of only nineteen years, he had come to see that his very thoughts were hers also: she expected her children, still unborn, to be replicas of herself, to accomplish what she had merely aimed at. Her aims had been softer, less stern, more humane than her husband's. Nobody could doubt, nobody who knew her did doubt that she was an incarnation of the peculiarly Christian virtues. As later, one by one, her children had arrived, she had learned to rule her household serenely without seeming herself to count for anything in her scheme of life. She had never quarrelled; she had always observed all the forms prescribed by the church; she had given alms, prayed, kept the sabbath, communed. Yet, till quite lately, she had always remained pleasant; pleasant to look at, in spite of her growing obesity; pleasant to touch; given to the simple joys of the table and the flesh. She had allowed her children to play all sorts of indoor and outdoor games; she had taught them to dance; she had given them freedom beyond her husband's wishes. She had been as worldly as she had been religious.

Thus, when he had realised that her nature was very different from his own--so different that only his great love for her could induce him even to tolerate it--the thought had grown in him that his children must necessarily be a compound of the two parent natures; and slowly, though reluctantly he had accustomed himself to that idea till he had accepted it. Had he not deliberately chosen his wife because she seemed to be his complement? Because to his dogmatic forthrightness she had added that touch of human blood-heat which he had seemed to lack? Not that, at the time, he would have acknowledged that lack as a defect. He had been, he still was, proud of the preponderance, in him, of brain over impulse. But, in a subtle self-deception, he had told himself that, what he arrived at as the conclusion of a slow process of thought and reasoning, was embedded in her as a natural inclination. She seemed to do instinctively, action coming from the heart, what he chose to do after mature deliberation, his action being dictated by the brain. In the past, it would never have occurred to him to weigh the two things and to assign a superior value to one or the other.

As time had gone by, however, and his children had grown, till they now ranged in age from thirty to thirteen, he did so weigh the two natures; and, though, in articulate thought, he still defended his own, appraising reason above all else, he was at heart very doubtful about the justice of such a verdict. Many trifles flitted up before his mind, examples of how she had been able to exact obedience from the children, by a word, a look, a smile, when all he could extract from them, by commands which were the result of careful thinking, was an evasion of his orders or a concealment of their wishes and of the actions which conformed to their desires.

A strange, new knowledge had come to him. As they grew up, these children were less and less a continuation of himself; less and less even of a blending of the parent natures. In each of them a third thing had appeared, their individual being, with inclinations and desires which seemed to be without a derivation from himself or his wife; and the strangest thing about it was that these new individual natures differed in each single one of his children. Whence were they? This was the most puzzling thing of all: a thing to which he always reverted. Already, at times, he began to see failure ahead in what his own pensive and contemplative soul had conceived to be the peculiar life work and task of his very existence.

As more and more of the girls grew into womanhood and John, the oldest boy, became a man, John Elliot had often pondered his own youth. Up to the time of his father's death he had known no will of his own. He had had dreams, it is true. But he had subordinated them to the wishes of his parents and the welfare of the parental homestead in Manitoba. And even his own dream--of a farm of his own, a wife, and many children--had been no more than a continuation of the practice of his parents. With them, it had been an instinct followed blindly; with him it had become a conscious vision. He had always felt himself to be continuous with his ancestors.

With anxiety and sinister forebodings he began to see a break in that continuity. Each one of his children urged forward in a separate, distinct direction with a decided angle between it and the direction in which he, the father, wished to guide them.

As, under the roof of the shed, east of the barn, he hooked the traces of the horse's harness to the irons of the single-tree, he suddenly straightened, a frown on his narrow forehead. One of his hands was worrying his grey beard. The present had taken possession of him again. His wife was going to town, to see Mary who was in trouble.

And once more a memory arose, this time concrete. Whenever man and wife had been worried in the past, they had talked their worries over at night, after they had gone to bed, lying side by side in the dark and speaking in whispers; and whenever Mrs. Elliot wished to make it clear that she considered the point at issue settled, she had turned to him and placed her arm about his shoulders; and, till she withdrew it, that touch had kept him awake in the night, awake but unable to think, and silent. She had done so last night after having declared her intention not to wait for her daughter but go to see her, uncalled.

Was it possible that he might have to live on one day without ever being able to look forward to that touch and the currents flowing from it, through him and her? That touch which held power to free him of all uncertainties?

In the house there was much stir. Mrs. Elliot was getting ready for her drive to town; her preparations were manifold. She would as easily have tried to walk as gone in her working-day clothes.

She had always been plump; but during the last ten years she had grown very stout, excessively so; and she was short of breath. Not often did she leave the farm any longer. Even on the place itself she confined her activities to the front yard and the hen-houses. In the yard, groups of lilac bushes, sheltered by rows of young poplars, protected small shrubs, gooseberries and currants; in the hen-houses, to the south, hundreds of White Leghorns were scratching and feeding themselves to maturity. In both places she sat down on a low stool when she had any work to do; one of her daughters lent her an arm whenever she moved about, in her coming or going.

Of the girls, three were at home. Henrietta, twenty-nine years old, still unmarried, had grown into a family tyrant, good at heart, no doubt, but harsh and bitter, troubled by a goitre which disfigured her throat. Cathleen, round-cheeked, pretty with her twenty-two years full of laughter, was self-contained and confident, for she had been teaching for five years and had made a success of it: she held a first-class teacher's certificate in Manitoba. Isabel, the least good-looking of the younger girls, mannish, with uneven teeth in her large mouth, was without ambition, somewhat dowdy, but always gay, carolling away in unexpected bursts of song no matter how serious the situation might happen to be.

Margaret, the youngest of the second group of girls, had, a few days ago, gone to her first school. The boys had been permitted to take up their sleeping quarters at John's shack, across the road; that way it was less noisy in the big house. Henry, the half-wit, did most of John's field-work; Norman and Arthur, the two youngest ones, attended classes in town where, as in Margaret's school, holidays came in winter.

The three girls were busy helping their mother to dress. They were in one of the two large front rooms upstairs, the parents' bed-room. In its centre Mrs. Elliot sat enthroned while Cathleen combed her hair, Isabel buttoned her shoes, and Henrietta laid out her dark-grey silks.

Now and then, as she handled the greying tresses of her mother's hair, Cathleen looked out through the window at the straggling yard of her brother's homestead. Her smile showed a shade of preoccupation.

The fact was that Mr. Ormond who, three years ago, had been principal of Arkwright High School where Cathleen taught had written to her, saying that he was going to spend a few days in Saskatchewan and asking whether he would be welcome if he dropped in at her parents' place. He was teaching in the university now. During her one year's acquaintance with him Mr. Ormond had appeared to her like a being from a different world. This very summer, just before holidays began, he had visited Arkwright "to renew acquaintances" as the Arkwright Argus had put it. He had stayed only one day; but in the evening he had come to the tennis court where Cathleen was playing with some girls. Without taking thought of what might be implied in her words, she had issued half an invitation to him. No doubt he had arranged his holidays in such a way as to take advantage of the hint.

Cathleen had shown his letter to her mother. Her mother had looked at her with a curiously questioning expression; and, seeing her daughter's slow, persistent blush, she had said lightly, "Well, child, why not? We can put him in Margaret's room."

But, once the implication in Mrs. Elliot's look had sunk in, Margaret's room had seemed hardly good enough for this visitor from a different sphere, that of great cities and universities. Cathleen, asking her heart many questions, had insisted on Henrietta's giving up the second large front room which, in the past, she had shared only with Gladys or Mary when they had come home for a visit. In fact, Cathleen had made herself quite unpopular by intimating on various occasions that nothing was good enough for Mr. Ormond. Special preparations had to be made; the house had to be scrubbed--as if it were not scrubbed every week; the curtains must be washed--as if they had not been washed during house-cleaning in spring and hung up on the line every Saturday since; a rug had to be provided for the floor of his room--that rug which Henrietta had wished for during the last ten years; her sisters must watch themselves in their speech so as not to make their everyday mistakes in grammar and pronunciation; her younger brothers must be on their best behaviour; John must cease using words like "jake" for good or fine.

The consequence was that the whole family had, in irritation, jumped to conclusions which, ungrounded though they were, had made Cathleen's heart beat faster.

Two days ago, John had brought a telegram from town, announcing Mr. Ormond's arrival for the evening of this very day; and Cathleen had coaxed her brother into promising to fetch the visitor in his new democrat.

Then, yesterday, a bomb-shell had fallen into these preoccupations with things which concerned the future.

Rumour, coming through John, asserted that Fred Sately was in financial difficulties. Between Fred and the Elliots there had been a break for some time. His career in Sedgeby had been meteoric. As, with mushroom speed, the little town had sprung from the prairie, Fred had become identified with its expansion, as a merchant and a promoter. People prophesied that Fred "would be a millionaire before he was done." His enterprises were widely ramified and bold enough to dazzle the imagination.

As he rose, Mary had become "distant" to her sisters. When they dressed in cottons, she had dressed in silks; when they worked with their hands and on their knees, she had sat in the parlour, giving orders to hired servants. She had a large house in town and a second house on the farm; for Fred had done what everybody did: he had filed on a homestead and bought a preemption; his place lay halfway between the Elliot farms and town. When John Elliot shook his head and advised caution, Mary spoke loftily; Fred shrugged his shoulders with a contemptuous grunt. "This is a game which one must understand, the greatest game on earth, making money! This country has a future. I discount it."

Fred had begun with a small furniture store. The business of a general merchant had been added; alongside, an implement shop had sprung up. He had even built a ware-house and bought wheat; but at the right moment he had sold that to an elevator company. Other merchants had moved into town; the place had been incorporated as a village; the rural municipality which was formed had opened its offices there. Meanwhile this man with the black, hanging moustache went about doing nothing, very careful not "to talk big" except to members of his wife's family.

At last the most ambitious of his enterprises had been planned: a huge, cooperative undertaking owned by the farmers, having for its aim the marketing of their produce and the purchase of all their needs, from a bag of salt to a motor car. A local paper was founded, the Sedgeby Searchlight, to launch the company under the name of "Farmers Limited." This company absorbed all Fred Sately's previous enterprises; and he drove about the country, selling stock at sixty dollars for a one-hundred-dollar share. He sold them for cash or notes, for horses or cows, for machinery or junk. The company's assets at last were written on its books with six figures. Fred was the president; Mr. Maclean, secretary of the municipality of Prairie Hills, was vice-president; and Mr. Murray, clerk of the county court and of the school district, was secretary-treasurer. The company threatened ruin to all other merchants some of whom were glad enough to sell out. A boosting spirit took hold of the countryside; the farmers, feeling they "were coming into their own," enlarged their acreage and worked day and night. Seven elevators sprang up in town. Fred Sately was the great man of the district. Everybody believed in him; everybody trusted him; he had vision; the future was his.

Everybody except the Elliots. When Fred called to sell shares, John Elliot senior hedged and evaded; John junior laughed and flatly refused to buy. There was no reason except that they had come to dislike Fred; for they were themselves impressed by the brilliancy of his career, by his plate-glass and mahogany office in town, by his ever more expensive clothes and his fine linen which hung incongruously on his broad peasant shoulders. John was not reticent about his aversion. "There isn't a man in the world," he said, "whom I can stand less than this Fred fellow." And he was abetted in his attitude by his sister Henrietta. Henrietta was rapidly becoming an old maid and apt to disparage any one who did not do as she directed. As a matter of fact, she influenced everybody except Cathleen who, being away from home for the greater part of the year, remained independent.

When, the day before, the first rumour had reached the Elliot household that all was not well with Farmers Limited, Henrietta had triumphed, of course. "I told you so!" And they agreed that she had always predicted Fred would come to a disastrous end.

The thunderbolt had fallen. Nobody knew exactly what had happened. Mr. Murray, the secretary-treasurer, had been arrested. The bonding company which protected the school funds had entered suit. Rumour had it that Mr. Murray had been released on bail furnished by Mr. Sately; additional rumours said that Mr. Sately himself might be arrested at any time.

"I wish," Henrietta said irritably to Cathleen, "you'd quit eying that yard of John's. It isn't time yet."

Cathleen smiled as she finished her mother's coiffure.

Isabel, who had been squatting on the floor, jumped up, heavily, clumsily, laughed, and pinched Cathleen's arm.

Mrs. Elliot also rose, leaning on Cathleen. Even that small effort deprived her of her breath.

"Children!" she admonished, standing ready to have the voluminous dress slipped over her head.

Henrietta frowned impatiently, "I don't see, mother, why you should go!"

Mrs. Elliot raised troubled eyes. "Mary is as much my child as you are."

"Certainly, mother," Cathleen agreed.

A moment later Mrs. Elliot, supported by Cathleen and Isabel, slowly descended the stairs. Henrietta remained behind, methodically putting the room to order.

In the small hall on the ground floor they halted.

Mrs. Elliot pointed into the dining room which opened to the left. "Isabel, the robe."

Outside, John Elliot was holding the horse.

Cathleen and her mother were alone. Isabel had picked the robe up and was spreading it over the buggy seat.

"Cathleen," Mrs. Elliot asked, "why does that man come?"

Cathleen flushed. She had thought all that was understood. "I don't know, mother," she said lightly. "To see the country, I suppose."

"Nonsense, child. Do you like him?" Her voice sounded worried. It seemed almost inconsiderate of this stranger to come at such a time.

Cathleen smoothed her white flannel skirt. "I respect him more than any man I know," she said demurely.

Mrs. Elliot sighed. She felt sorry for her daughter who stood there, trembling in every fibre with life and probably expecting her lover. She was on the point of saying something to soften the worried harshness of her words. But Isabel reentered. The moment was gone.

"Ready, mother," Isabel said.

Mrs. Elliot, guided by Cathleen, stepped through the door.

All of them helped her to gain the seat. John Elliot muttered, "Hadn't I better drive?"

"I'd rather go alone, John," she said, panting from the exertion as she spread herself on the cushions.

Isabel covered her knees with a second robe; and the vehicle rolled down to the road and away to the north, the horse trotting till it reached the steep ascent of the hill where it fell into a walk.

As the road wound along over bare hill after hill, Mrs. Elliot thought of all she knew of the married life of her third-oldest daughter who had been the first to be married.

"My child," she had asked her one day, nearly a year after the wedding, when the Satelys had still been living in the flat above the store, "are you happy?"

Mary had shrugged her shoulders, wearily disengaging herself from her mother's arms. "I don't know."

"Fred is good to you? All that could be expected?"

"I suppose so, mother."

Mrs. Elliot had looked at her, searchingly. She would be a grandmother soon. How could that be? She had still felt so young. Grandmother! How tired that young woman looked who, only a few years ago, had been her own little girl! What had happened?

"Perhaps you had set your expectations too high?"

"No, mother," Mary had said with the same weary voice. "Don't let us talk about it. I'll tell you all in a very few words. We get up in the morning. I make breakfast. He goes out. He comes home for his meals and goes out again. I live in a flat of my own. My husband is my boarder. I might be the housekeeper of a bachelor in town. The only difference is that he comes to my bed at night as if he had a right to be there. I wish I had known!"

Tears had run down Mrs. Elliot's cheeks. "Do you blame me, Mary?"

"Blame you? What for? I have what I wanted."

"Married life is a compromise."

"A compromise means agreement. I live my life, such as it is. He lives his."

"It will be better when the child is born."

"I hope so. Let us talk of other things."

The child had been born, a boy: Mary's child, hardly Fred's. A year later, a second boy; two girls, two more boys; the years had sped.

Mary had lived a quiet life with her children, indifferent to the world. The town had grown.

One day she awoke. She began to use powder and rouge; she ordered expensive dresses; she insisted on a house of her own; then on a larger one. Fred encouraged her. Expense enhanced his credit.

Mrs. Elliot had looked on aghast.

"Fred must be doing well?" she had asked one day.

"I suppose he is," Mary had answered.

Mrs. Elliot had said pointedly, "Many admire him."

"Do they?"

There had been no more children. Between the parental household and Mary the gulf had opened. When one set of furniture had succeeded another in the Sately establishment, each more expensive than the other, Mary had mocked at the unvarying simplicity in her father's house. All this had worried Mrs. Elliot, especially the change in her daughter since she had ceased to bear children. One day she had sounded her.

"Mary, I sometimes wonder whether all is well between your husband and you?"

"What should be wrong?"

"How old is Dusha?" Dusha--Andrew--was the youngest born.

"Three years and two months." Mary had been flippant about it. "I know, mother. No. There won't be any more children."

Mrs. Elliot had looked noncomprehension. "Does Fred . . ."

Mary had laughed. "Fred? It has nothing to do with Fred. I don't want any more. We have settled that once for all. I wish I had been wiser ten years ago. I should not have six. There are ways and means."

"Child!"

Again Mary laughed: a good-natured, superior laugh. "You are innocent, mother. Old-fashioned. The world moves on. You can eat your cake and have it, too."

Of all this Mrs. Elliot thought as she drove to town; and of many other things. She shook her head.

She had not often seen Mary of late. Mary had grown away from her. All children seemed to do so. She resented it but felt unable to remedy matters. Secretly she cried over it; and she blamed the girl. But since she was in trouble, she must go to her; she was her mother.

The town consisted of two streets crossing each other at right angles. Besides, there was the row of elevators along the track. The intersection of the streets was the business centre; their ends formed the residential quarters. Not a tree or shrub had grown as yet to relieve the monotony of the sky-line.

The third house to the right of Main Street, coming from the south, was the Sately residence: large, pretentious, glaringly new: a huge block on a square foundation, with a roofed-over porch along the west front. The building was painted dark-brown, with corner-boards, doors, window-frames the colour of cream.

The yard, large, roomy, pretentious like the house, holding the neighbourhood at a respectful distance, was enclosed by a picket-fence. But it was not cultivated; it consisted of the same short-grass prairie which formed the road-side.

Behind the house stood a large stable, constructed like a small barn. To the back yard a gate gave access from the lane along the south side of the property.

As Mrs. Elliot turned into this lane, she noticed her son-in-law in the drive-way of the stable, hitching a team of drivers to a buggy.

She thought she saw a smile flitting over his usually impassive face: furtive and cynical. But when he came to open the gate, the attitude of his square-shouldered, deep-chested body and the expression of his sallow, massive features were those of a dutiful deference.

She felt uncomfortable in the presence of this man who was only slightly younger than she. There was even an admixture of repulsion when she returned his greeting by a nod.

He helped her to alight and reached for the lines.

Mary stood in the inner backdoor, looking undisturbed; the slight flush on her pretty face gave her a girlish look. It seemed impossible that she should be the mother of six children.

"My child!"

Breathlessly Mrs. Elliot entered the kitchen which glittered with white enamel and a range of polished grey steel. A hired girl, bashful and apologetic in the older woman's ponderous presence, was busy washing the dinner dishes and cast a furtive glance at her as, leaning on her daughter's arm, she passed into the large dining room which, like the rest of the house, shone with newness.

The door closed. For a second the two women stood fronting each other. They seemed to make sure that all was still in the house, that they were secure from the intrusion of the children.

Then, with a curious sound from her throat, Mary flung her arms about her mother's neck.

"My child! My little girl!"

Mary disengaged herself and led her into the darkened parlor where she sank into a huge, upholstered arm-chair matching the opaque curtains. She herself sat down on a floor-cushion at her mother's feet.

For a moment there was silence.

Then, "It is true, child?"

Mary nodded: a peculiar nod.

"My poor, poor girl!"

Mary lowered her head. "Mother," she whispered, "something has happened at last!"

Mrs. Elliot caught her breath.

Mary stretched her arms in a languid gesture. She looked seductively fresh and animated in her loose, flowing dress of dark-flowered silk. She had just had a bath; her skin was cool and fragrant.

"I've been waiting for years!" she said, rose, and took a turn through the room.

"Child!" Mrs. Elliot exclaimed. "If rumour speaks true, this may mean disgrace and prosecution."

Mary shrugged her shoulders. "Disgrace!"

Her daughter's smile shocked Mrs. Elliot. Her wide eyes followed the younger woman's movements through the room. A poignant realisation came to her of the distance which separated her from this child whom she had nursed at her breast how long, how short a time ago! Suddenly she seemed to see herself in this girl as she had been at her age: when Isabel had been born, twenty-one years ago: young, slender, active. And now? What was left but self-pity? Mary had turned and was looking at her. Yes, of all her children she was most like her in appearance.

"Mother," Mary said, "I have been a married woman for over ten years. You said once that married life is a compromise. I didn't acknowledge it then. I don't acknowledge it now. Not in the sense in which you meant it. You meant that each has to realise the other; each has to modify his own wishes and actions, his nature even. Did you not?"

Mrs. Elliot nodded.

Mary laughed lightly. "I've thought about it these last few years. I've thought about your own married life. When father spoke to you, even when he was angry, there was still a reserve. You were you; he was he. Even when we girls were grown up, there was in father's manner to you something left of the lover. How would it have been with you had father been like a steam-roller crushing all over which it passes? Many admire him, you said one day of Fred. What did they admire? The selfish, iron composure with which he pursued his purpose, ignoring the feelings of others. Something has checked him; and you want me not to be glad! A woman cannot be married to any one for ten years and remain unchanged. Least of all I! And less still, I married to Fred Sately. You are astonished to see what has come of it. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. I am changed. You asked me once whether I blamed you. If you asked me again, I should not say no. I should say, I can't tell."

"Mary! You wanted him! Nobody forced you!"

"No. But who was I? A silly girl. You let me! My own people let me walk into a snare!"

Mrs. Elliot sat and stared. Tears trickled over her almost uncannily smooth cheeks. Her heart ached with a sharp, physical pain. She fell back in her chair, fainting.

When she awoke, she was lying down; her clothes had been loosened, her feet raised to a chair. Mary was applying compresses to her temples.

She lay without stirring as if she were basking in a sense of physical comfort. Then memory returned. She reached for her daughter's hand and drew her down till her head rested on her shoulder.

"Mary," she whispered, "there is room in your parents' house for you and your children."

Mary straightened. "Don't talk, mother. You are ill."

"I am well enough to attend to my children's welfare." And Mrs. Elliot lifted herself to a sitting posture.

"You mean you want me to leave him?"

"After what has happened . . ."

"I took him for better or worse. I am no coward, I hope."

"When poverty comes in through the door, love flies out through the window."

"Love! Mother, I have been alone all through these years. I am not an Elliot for nothing. Would you have left father under similar circumstances?"

"The circumstances could not have arisen."

"Father is human."

"He is upright."

"He may have been merely less tempted, mother."

For several minutes Mrs. Elliot remained silent. There was a gulf . . . But what of it? This girl was her child. With a sudden movement of tenderness she reached once more for Mary's head, drew it down, kissed it, and whispered, "God bless you! We'll hope for his mercy in our afflictions!"

Half an hour after Mrs. Elliot had arrived in town, Fred Sately stopped his horses in front of John Elliot senior's barn.

He was being watched from the grey house at the foot of the hill where Cathleen was getting ready to meet the train. None of the girls went out to welcome the brother-in-law. All three stood at the window of the small north-east room which Cathleen shared with Isabel.

"So he's found his way here at last, now he's in trouble!" Henrietta said.

Isabel, rarely serious, sighed. "Well, I am sorry for Mary."

"I wonder," Cathleen asked, "is father in the house?"

"No," Henrietta replied. "He's gone over to John's."

Fred Sately was tying his horses to one of the wheels of the wagon which stood in front of the barn. He looked about, entered the stable, and disappeared from view. When he returned, he stood in the broad, unmitigated sunlight of the afternoon, scanning the valley between the bare, untreed hills.

Then, as if he had found what he was looking for, he strode across the back yard, past the house, and to the gate which led to the road.

The girls ran into the front room to watch.

At the door of the low, shed-like stable on their brother's yard, across the road, they discovered their father in conversation with his son. John junior was, as usual, wildly gesticulating while he spoke to his father. The latter stood quiet, self-contained, grey as ever.

Fred Sately reached the gate before it became apparent that he had been observed by the two men on the other farm. Then John Elliot senior turned and descended to the road while John junior violently shrugged his shoulders as if declining to accompany him.

Fred Sately had seen the gesture of the short, stocky, round-shouldered figure at the stable and interpreted it correctly; he waited on the trail.

There, after an interval, the two men met, the younger one nodding, the older one merely shooting a glance at him. A few words were interchanged. John Elliot turned to a stone pile along the fence of his yard and sat down on a boulder. Fred followed him and, raising a foot to one of the stones, leaned an elbow on his knee and spoke, bent over.

Every movement was watched from the window.

"Well," Henrietta broke the silence at last, "thank the Lord! The Elliots do not cater to any Sately!"

Isabel hummed a tune; Cathleen turned back into her own room and went on with her task of dressing.

At the stone pile, a brief and guarded conversation took place.

"How much is needed to straighten your affairs out?" John Elliot asked.

"Three to four thousand dollars."

John Elliot received the information in silence.

"The business is a going concern," Fred went on, with hardly the suggestion of a plea in his voice. "The difficulty is momentary. If I gain a month's time, things will arrange themselves."

"It is hardly an ordinary stringency," John Elliot said. "Lack of funds does not bring arrests in its wake."

"Well," Fred remarked drily. "If you hold me responsible for what Murray does . . ."

"I don't. But you are aware that crooked dealings on the part of an officer throw suspicion on the whole concern."

"Murray may have lived beyond his means. No uncommon thing these days."

"What do you expect me to do?"

"To whom should I go if not to you?"

"Granting that you may have some claim, there are others to consider."

"I ask for nothing but a loan, without prejudice to any one's prospects."

"Why not go to the bank or mortgage your land?"

"The land is mortgaged. The bank has carried me so far but will not go farther."

John Elliot shot a glance from under his eyebrows. "The bank knows more of your circumstances than I do. If it were a case of helping my daughter and her husband personally, it would be a different matter. But I am to keep a business on its feet of which I know nothing."

"That," Fred said pointedly, "is hardly my fault. I have often asked you and your son to come in with me."

"On that point my son and I are agreed. We are farmers. We wish to stay out of what we consider doubtful enterprises."

"Do you impugn my integrity?"

"Rumour does."

"Listen to rumour!"

"Experience says, where there is smoke, there is fire."

This silenced Fred. He could not pursue the line he had followed without exposing himself to defeat. As if such a course had been suggested, he said, "I am willing to let you examine my books."

John Elliot mused. "All right. I shall come to a meeting in town. I want the manager of the bank in Kicking Horse and a representative of the mortgage company to be present. Then I shall decide whether I can do anything or not."

Fred Sately did not at once reply. He had reason to dread an investigation. Yet, the mere presence of a man of John Elliot's standing would be a help. The banker would have the interest of his own institution in view; he would be careful not to allow the case to look hopeless. Once committed, John Elliot would be drawn in more and more deeply. With Elliot behind him, he, Fred, could restore public confidence; and public confidence was all that was needed. The Murray affair? He would wire Mr. Heap, the lawyer in the provincial capital who was handling the case. Even he, having by this time received information about all the ramifications of the situation, would be impressed by the fact that John Elliot had agreed to a meeting.

"Very well. I shall send invitations. What date?"

John Elliot rose. "A week from to-morrow. At ten in the morning. Your office in town."

He accompanied his son-in-law to the gate and stood there, waiting to let him out.

On his way to the buggy, Fred scanned the windows of the house. Henrietta was hostile. Was she watching him? Isabel was under her influence; she had always lived at home. To his surprise he saw Cathleen stepping back from the window upstairs. Cathleen had no reason to be unfriendly. She had seen more of the world and of life than the rest of the girls; she had set her aims higher. She spent, on her wardrobe, sums which seemed fabulous to Isabel and Henrietta. She should be an ally. Just now he wished to conciliate any Elliot. But the atmosphere of the place seemed to freeze him. He walked through a hostile void.

He untied his horses, climbed into the buggy, and turned. At the gate, he nodded. "So long, then."

John Elliot nodded gravely back.

On his way to town Fred met Norman and Arthur who were coming from school. His impulse to be friendly with any Elliot still persisted; and he drew his horses to a stop.

"Hello!" he said.

Arthur looked at Norman and laughed.

"Hello, Fred," Norman returned the greeting with ingratiating affability, speaking as to one immensely his junior. He stepped up to the team and unhooked the traces of the off horse. The buggy stood in the centre of the road.

Arthur, seeing what he was doing and catching a quick glance of his, went to the other side and did the same thing with the near horse. Their actions looked as if they were premeditated and concerted.

"Well," Norman went on as if what he did were the most natural thing to do under the circumstances, "How are you today, Fred? This was one hot day! I tell you it was hot in school! We've a great new game. The match game we call it. I must explain that to you one day." Meanwhile he tied the traces securely on the horses' backs, giving directions to his younger brother in a business-like way. "Hold on, there, Art! That won't do. This way. Now, that is better. The neck-yoke next." And he went forward and dropped the tongue of the buggy to the road.

Fred Sately's brow was knitted into a frown. He pushed his expensive hat back from his forehead. At last he spoke angrily. "You hitch those horses up again, do you hear?"

"Sure," Norman said, working furiously while he buckled the breast-straps. Taking his school-bag off his shoulder, he threw it to Arthur and, in a sibilant whisper, gave orders, "Step back. Watch out. Then run."

Meanwhile, with a genial smile, he returned to the dash-board of the buggy and, addressing the horses, broke into action. "Hi, there!" he yelled and, swinging his arms, he dealt each one a resounding slap on the rump. "Get up!"

The next moment he and Arthur were running away as fast as they could.

The horses, taken by surprise, reared and bounded forward. Fred Sately, unwilling to let go of the lines, could save himself from being dragged down head forward only by clearing the dash-board with a desperate leap--a most undignified proceeding when you stare ruin in the face and are in a tragic mood.

The boys admired him from a safe distance.

"I bet you," Norman said, "he is saying a Sunday school lesson."

Arthur was too much convulsed with laughter to make reply.

An hour later John junior drove up to the door of his father's house; his new democrat was drawn by two lean, rangy bronchos.

Short, stocky, round-shouldered, with goggle eyes and an enormous, hanging nether lip in his red, spherical face, he cut a strange figure; for, in spite of his physical handicaps, he had attired himself like a fashionable dandy. On his hands--which, small though they were, formed just now the most conspicuous part of him--he wore lemon-coloured kid gloves; on his feet, patent-leather shoes. His suit was of navy-blue serge; his neck, encased in a high, starched collar with a flamboyant tie. A huge sombrero of soft black felt sat tilted on the bald dome of his head.

Tall and slender, Cathleen came from the house, trim and neat in a fawn-coloured suit. John bent down with a leering grin, rolling his prominent eyes and pushing out his red, hanging nether lip.

"Well, Queenie, am I in style?"

"John!" Cathleen exclaimed half laughing, half indignant, "you are a veritable caricature!"

"Whatever that may be. Don't I look jake? See the gloves? Seven dollars cash without discount. And the sombrero? Jakaloo, Queenie! We'll show the beau from the city that we can dress in the barren hills, too."

"You are incorrigible!" Cathleen said as she climbed to her brother's side.

"Exactly!" John said. "We'll show him! We can hold our own with the best." And, turning to his horses, "Get up, there, you cows, or I'll knock your hearts out!"

From the door, Isabel waved a good-by; on Henrietta's lips--she stood at the window in the dining room--played an ironical smile.