Hawtrey's Deputy Part 19

"That man," she said, "is a great favourite of mine. For one thing, he's fastidious, though he's fortunately very far from perfect in some respects. He has a red-hot temper, which now and then runs away with him."

"What do you mean by fastidious?"

"It's a little difficult to define, but I certainly don't mean pernicketty. Of course, there is a fastidiousness which makes one shrink from unpleasant things, but Harry's is the other kind. It impels him to do them every now and then."

Agatha made no answer. She was uneasily conscious that it might not be advisable to think too much about this man, and in another minute or two they reached the homestead. The house was a plain frame building that had apparently grown out of an older and smaller one of logs, part of which remained. It was much the same with the barns and stables, for while they were stoutly built of framed timber or logs one end of most of them was lower than the rest, and in some cases consisted of poles and sods. Even to her untrained eyes all she saw suggested order, neatness, and efficiency. The whole was flanked and sheltered by a big birch bluff, in which trunks and branches showed up through a thin green haze of tiny opening leaves, though here and there uncovered twigs still cut in lace-like tracery against the blue of the sky.

A man whom Wyllard had sent after them took the horses, and when she got down Agatha commented on what she called the added-to look of the buildings.

"The Range," said Mrs. Hastings, "has grown rapidly since Harry took hold. The old part represents the high-water mark of his father's efforts. Of course," she added reflectively, "Harry has had command of some capital since a relative of his died, but I never thought that explained everything."

Then they entered the house, and a grey-haired Swedish woman led them through several match-boarded rooms into a big, cool hall. She left them there for awhile, and Agatha was busy for a minute or two with her impressions of the house. It was singularly empty by comparison with the few English homesteads she had seen. There were neither curtains nor carpets nor hangings of any kind, but it was commodious and comfortable.

"What can a bachelor want with a place like this?" she asked.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Hastings; "perhaps it's Harry's idea of having every thing proportionate. The Range is quite a big, and generally a prosperous, farm. Besides, it's likely that he doesn't contemplate remaining a bachelor for ever. Indeed, Allen and I sometimes wonder how he has escaped so long."

"Is that the right word?" Agatha asked.

"It is," said her companion with a laugh. "You see, he's highly eligible from our point of view, but at the same time he's apparently invulnerable. I believe," she added drily, "that's the right word, too."

Then the Swedish housekeeper appeared again, and they talked with her until she retired to bring the six o'clock supper. Soon after it was laid out Wyllard and the men came in. He was attired as when Agatha had last seen him, except that he had evidently brushed himself and put on a store jacket. He led his guests to the head of the long table, but the men--and there were a number of them--sat below, and had evidently no diffidence about addressing question or comment to their employer.

They ate with a somewhat voracious haste, but that appeared to be the custom of the country, and Agatha could find no great fault with their manners or conversation. The latter was, for the most part, quaintly witty, and some of them used what struck her as remarkably fitting and original similes. Indeed, as the meal proceeded she became curiously interested in the men and their surroundings.

The windows were open wide, and a sweet, warm air swept into the barely furnished room. The s.p.a.ciousness of the latter impressed her, and she was pleased with the evident unity between these brown-faced, strong-armed toilers and their leader. He sat, self-contained, but courteous and responsive to all alike, at the head of his table, and though that is, as she had discovered, in most respects an essentially democratic country, she felt that there was something almost feudal in the relations between him and his men. She could not imagine them being confined to the mere exaction of so much labour and the expectation of payment of wages due. She was also pleased that he had not changed his dress, which would, she felt, have been a singularly unfitting action. In fact, so strong was her interest that she was almost astonished when the meal was over, though it must be admitted that most of the men rose and went out in fifteen minutes. Afterwards she and Mrs. Hastings talked with the housekeeper for awhile, and an hour had slipped away when Wyllard suggested that he should show her the sloo beyond the bluff.

"It's the nearest approach to a lake we have until you get to the alkali tract," he said.

Agatha went with him through the shadow of the wood, and when at length they came out of it he found her a seat upon a fallen birch. The house and ploughing were hidden now, and they were alone on the slope to a slight hollow, in which half a mile of gleaming water lay. Its surface was broken here and there, by tussocks of gra.s.s and reeds, and beyond it the prairie ran back unbroken, a dim grey waste, to the horizon.

The sun had dipped behind the bluff, and the sky had become a vast green transparency. There was no wind now, but a wonderful exhilarating freshness crept into the cooling air, and the stillness was only broken by the clamour of startled wildfowl which presently sank again. Agatha could see them paddling in cl.u.s.ters about the gleaming sloo.

"Those are ducks--wild ones?" she asked.

"Yes," said Wyllard; "duck of various kinds. Most of them the same as your English ones."

"Do you shoot them?"

Agatha was not greatly interested, but he seemed disposed to silence, and she felt, for no very clear reason, that it was advisable to talk of something.

"No," he said, "not often, anyway. If Mrs. Nansen wants a couple I crawl down to the long gra.s.s with the rifle and get them for her."

"The rifle? Doesn't the big bullet destroy them?"

"No," said Wyllard. "You have to shoot their head off or cut their neck in two."

"You can do that--when they're right out in the sloo?" asked Agatha, who had learned that it is much more difficult to shoot with a rifle than a shot-gun, which spreads its charge.

Wyllard smiled. "Generally; that is, if I haven't been doing much just before. It depends upon one's hands. We have our game laws, but as a rule n.o.body worries about them, and, anyway, those birds won't nest until they reach the tundra by the Polar Sea. Still, as I said, we never shoot them unless Mrs. Nansen wants one or two for the pot."

"Why?"

"I don't quite know. For one thing, they're worn out; they just stop here to rest."

His answer appealed to the girl. It did not seem strange to her that the love of the lower creation should be strong in this man, who had no hesitation in admitting that the game laws were no restraint to him.

For the most part, at least, when these Lesser Brethren sailed down out of the blue heavens worn with their journey he gave them right of sanctuary.

"They have come a long way?" she asked.

Wyllard pointed towards the South. "From Florida, Cuba, Yucatan; further than that, perhaps. In a day or two they'll push on again towards the Pole, and others will take their places. There's a further detachment arriving now."

Looking up, Agatha saw a straggling wedge of birds dotted in dusky specks against the vault, of transcendental green. It coalesced, drew out again, and dropped swiftly, and the air was filled with the rush of wings; then there was a harsh crying and splashing, and she heard the troubled water lap among the reeds until deep silence closed in upon the sloo again.

"I wonder," she said, "why they do it?"

A rather curious smile crept into Wyllard's eyes. "It's their destiny: they're wanderers and strangers without a habitation: there's unrest in them. After a few months on the tundra mosses to gather strength and teach the young to fly, they'll unfold their wings to beat another pa.s.sage before the icy gales. Some of us, I think, are like them!"

Agatha could not avoid the personal application. It would have appeared less admissible among her friends at The Grange, but she felt that the constraints of English reticence were out of place in the wilderness.

"You surely don't apply that to yourself," she said. "You certainly have a habitation--the finest, isn't it, on this part of the prairie?"

"Yes," said Wyllard slowly; "I suppose it is. I've now had a little rest and quietness, too."

This did not appear to call for an answer, and Agatha sat silent.

"Still," he said, "I have a feeling that some day the call will come, and I shall have to take the trail again." He paused, and looked at her before he added, "It would be easier if one hadn't to go alone, or, since that would be necessary, if one had at least something to come back to when the journey was done."

"It would be necessary?" said Agatha, who was rather puzzled by his steady gaze.

"Yes," he said with a somewhat impressive gravity, "the call will come from the icy North if it ever comes at all."

There was another brief silence, and Agatha wondered what he was thinking of until he went on again.

"I remember how I last came back from there. We were rather late that season, and out of our usual beat when the gale broke upon us between Alaska and Asia in the gateway of the Pole. We ran before it with a strip of the boom-foresail on her and a jib that blew to ribands every now and then. She was a little schooner of ninety tons or so, and for most of a week she scudded with the grey seas tumbling after her, white-topped, out of the snow and spume. They ranged high above her taffrail curling horribly, but one did not want to look at them. The one man on deck had a line about him, and he looked ahead, watching her s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g round with hove-up bows as she climbed the seas. If he'd let her fall off or claw up, the next one would have made an end of her.

He was knee deep half the time in icy brine, and his hands had split and opened with the frost, but the sweat dripped from him as he clung to the jarring wheel. One of those helmsmen--perhaps two--had another trouble which preyed on them. They were thinking of the three men they had left behind.

"Well," he added, "we ran out of the gale, and I had bitter words to face when we reached Vancouver. As one result of it I walked out of the city with four or five dollars in my pocket--though there was a share due to me. Then I rode up into the ranges in an open car to mend railroad bridges in the frost and snow. It was not the kind of home-coming one would care to look forward to."

"Ah," said Agatha, "it must have been horribly dreary?"

The man met her eyes. "Yes," he said, "you--know. You came here from far away, I think a little weary, too, and something failed you. Then you felt yourself adrift. There were--it seemed--only strangers round you, but you were wrong in one respect; you were by no means a stranger to me."

He had been leaning against a birch trunk, but now he moved a little nearer, and stood gravely looking down on her.

"You have sent Gregory away?" he said.

"Yes," said Agatha, and, startled as she was, it did not strike her that the mere admission was misleading.

Wyllard stretched his hands out. "Then won't you come to me?"