Читать книгу Ranching for Sylvia - Harold Bindloss - Страница 10

It was nearing midnight when George walked impatiently up and down the waiting-room in Winnipeg station, for the western express was very late, and nobody seemed to know when it would start. George was nevertheless interested in his surroundings, and with some reason. The great room was built in palatial style, with domed roof, tessellated marble floor, and stately pillars: it was brilliantly lighted; and massively-framed paintings of snow-capped peaks and river gorges adorned the walls. An excursion-train from Winnipeg Beach had just come in, and streams of young men and women in summer attire were passing through the room. They all looked happy and prosperous: he thought the girls' light dresses were gayer and smarter than those usually seen among a crowd of English passengers; but there was another side to the picture.

Rows of artistic seats ran here and there, and each was occupied by jaded immigrants, worn out by their journey in the sweltering Colonist cars. Piles of dilapidated baggage surrounded them, and among it exhausted children lay asleep. Drowsy, dusty women, with careworn faces, were huddled beside them; men bearing the stamp of ill-paid toil sat in dejected apathy; and all about each group the floor, which was wet with drippings from the roof, was strewn with banana skins, crumbs, and scraps of food. There had been heavy rains, and the atmosphere was hot and humid. It was, however, the silence of these newcomers that struck George most. There was no grumbling among them—they scarcely seemed vigorous enough for that—but as he passed one row he heard a woman's low sobbing and the wail of a fretful child.

After a while the girl he had met on the train appeared and intimated by a smile that he might join her. They found an unoccupied seat, and a smartly-attired young man who was approaching it stopped when he saw them.

"Well," he said coolly, "I guess I won't intrude."

George felt seriously annoyed with him, but he was reassured when his companion laughed with candid amusement. Though there was no doubt of her prettiness, he had already noticed that she did not impress one most forcibly with the fact that she was an attractive young woman. It seemed to sink into the background when one spoke to her.

"It was rather tedious waiting in the hotel," she explained. "There was nobody I could talk to; my father is busy with a grain broker."

"Then he is a farmer?"

"Yes," said the girl, "he has a farm."

"And you live out in the West with him?"

"Of course," she said, smiling. "Still, I have been in Montreal, and England." Then she turned and glanced at the jaded immigrants. "One feels sorry for them; they have so much to bear."

George felt that she wished to change the subject, and he followed her lead.

"I feel inclined to wonder where they all go to and how you employ them. Your people still seem anxious to bring them in."

"Yes," she replied thoughtfully, "It's rather a difficult question. Of course, we pay high wages—people who say they must dispense with help and can't carry out useful projects would like to see them lower—but there's the long winter when, out West at least, very few men can work. Then what the others have earned in summer rapidly melts."

"But what do the Canadian farm-hands and mechanics think? It wouldn't suit them to have wages broken down."

West had come up a few moments earlier.

"It doesn't matter," he laughed; "they won't be consulted. It's the other people who pull the strings, and they're adopting a forward policy—rush them all in; it's their lookout when they get here. That's my opinion; though I'll own that I know remarkably little about western Canada."

"You won't admit he's right," George said to the girl.

She looked grave.

"Sometimes," she answered, "I wonder."

Then she turned to West.

"You don't seem impressed with the country," she said.

"As a rule, I try to be truthful. The country strikes me as being pretty mixed, full of contrasts. There's this place, for instance; one could imagine they had meant to build a Greek temple, and now it looks more like a swimming-bath. After planning the rest magnificently, why couldn't they put on a roof that wouldn't leak?"

"It has been an exceptionally heavy rain," the girl reminded him.

"Just so. But couldn't somebody get a broom and sweep the water out?

Our unimaginative English folk could rise as far as that."

She laughed good-humoredly, and her father sauntered up to them.

"Any news of the train yet?" he asked.

"No, sir," said Edgar. "In my opinion, any attempt to extract reliable information from a Canadian railroad-hand is a waste of time. No doubt, it's so scarce that it hurts them to part with it."

The Westerner looked at him with a little hard smile. He was tall and gaunt and dressed in baggy clothes, but there was a hint of power in his face, which was lined, and deeply bronzed by exposure to the weather.

"Well," he retorted, "what do you expect, Percy, if you talk to them like that? But I want to thank you and your partner for taking care of my girl when she went to see the wreck. Fellow on the cars told me—said you were a gritty pup!"

Edgar looked confused, but the man drew an old skin bag out of his pocket.

"It's domestic leaf; take a smoke."

"No, thanks," said Edgar quickly. "I've no doubt it's excellent, but I really prefer the common Virginia stuff."

"Matter of habit," replied the other. "I don't carry cigars; they're expensive. Going far West?"

"We get off at Sage Butte."

"It's called Butte. I'm located in that district."

"Then I wonder if you knew an Englishman named Marston?" George interposed.

"I certainly did; he died last winter. Oughtn't to have come out farming; he hadn't the grip."

George felt surprised. He had always admired Marston, who had excelled in whatever he took in hand. It was strange and disconcerting to hear him disparaged.

"Will you tell me what you mean by that?" he asked.

"Why, yes. I've nothing against the man. I liked him—guess everybody did—but the contract he was up against was too big for him. Had his first crop frozen, and lost his nerve and judgment after that—the man who gets ahead here must have the grit to stand up against a few bad seasons. Marston acted foolishly; wasted his money buying machines and teams he could have done without, and then let up when he saw it wouldn't pay him to use them right off; but that was part his wife's fault. She drove him pretty hard—though, in some ways, I guess he needed it."

George frowned. Sylvia, he admitted, was ambitious, and she might have put a little pressure upon Marston now and then; but that she should have urged him on toward ruin in her eagerness to get rich was incredible.

"I think you must be mistaken about his wife," he remarked.

"Well," drawled the Canadian, "I'm not always right."

Then a bell tolled outside, an official shouted the names of towns, and there was a sudden stir and murmur of voices in the great waiting-room. Men seized their bags and bundles, women dragged sleepy children to their feet, and a crowd began to press about the outlet.

"Guess that's our train. She's going to be pretty full," said the

Canadian.

The party joined a stream of hurrying passengers, and regretted their haste when they were violently driven through the door and into a railed-off space on the platform, where shouting railroad-hands were endeavoring to restrain the surging crowd. Nobody heeded them; the immigrants' patience was exhausted, and they had suddenly changed from a dully apathetic multitude waiting in various stages of dejection to a savage mob fired by one determined purpose. Near by stood a long row of lighted cars, and the immigrants meant to get on board them without loss of time. There were two gates, guarded by officials who endeavored to discriminate between the holders of first and second class tickets, but the crowd was in no mood to submit to the separation.

It raged behind the barrier, and when one gate was rashly pushed back a little too far, a clamorous, jostling mass of humanity stormed the opening. Its guardians were flung aside, helpless, and the foremost of the mob poured out upon the platform, while the pressure about the gap grew insupportable. Women screamed, children were reft away from their mothers, panting men trampled over bags and bundles torn from their owners' hands, and George and the elderly Canadian struggled determinedly to prevent the girl's being badly crushed. Edgar had disappeared, though they once heard his voice, raised in angry protest.

They were forced close up to the outlet, when there was a check. More officials had been summoned; somebody had dropped a heavy box which obstructed the passage, and a group of passengers began a savage fight for its recovery. George seized a man who was jostling the girl and thrust him backward; but the next moment he was struck by somebody, and he saw nothing of his companions when, after being violently driven to and fro, he reached the gate. A woman with two screaming children clinging to her appeared beside him, and he held a man so that she might pass. He was breathless, and almost exhausted, but he secured her a little room; and then the pressure suddenly slackened. The crowd swept out like a flood from a broken dam, and in a few more moments George stood, gasping, on the platform amid a thinner stream of running people. There was no sign of the Canadian or his daughter; the cars were besieged; and George waited until Edgar joined him, flushed and disheveled.

"I suppose I was lucky in getting through with only my jacket badly torn," said the lad, "I wondered why the railroad people caged up their passengers behind iron bars, but now I know."

George laughed.

"I don't think this kind of thing is altogether usual. Owing to the accident, they've no doubt had two trainloads to handle instead of one. But the platform's emptying; shall we look for a place?"

They managed to enter a car, though the stream of passengers, pouring in by the two vestibules, met within in dire confusion, choking up the passage with their baggage. Order was, however, restored at last; and, with the tolling of the bell, and a jerk that flung those unprepared off their feet, the great express got off.

"Nobody left behind," Edgar announced, after a glance through the window. "I can't imagine where they put them all; though I've never seen a train like this. But what has become of our Canadian friends?"

George said he did not know, and Edgar resumed:

"I'm rather taken with the girl—strikes me as intelligent as well as fetching. The man's a grim old savage, but I'm inclined to think he's prosperous; when a fellow says he can't afford cigars I generally suspect him of being rich. It's a pity that stinginess is one of the roads to affluence."