Laddie Part 48

"And for answer you've split the echoes with some shrill, abominable air, and plowed, before her very eyes, for a week!"

Then Laddie laughed.

"Do you know," he said; "that's a good one on me! It never occurred to me that she would not be familiar with that air, and understand its application. Do you mean to crush me further by telling me that all my perfectly lovely vocalizing and whistling was lost?"

"It was a dem irritating, challenging sort of thing," said Mr. Pryor.

"I listened to it by the hour, myself, trying to make out exactly what it did mean. It seemed to combine defiance with pleading, and through and over all ran a note of glee that was really quite charming."

"You have quoted a part of it, literally," said Laddie. "'A note of glee'--the cry of a glad heart, at peace with all the world, busy with congenial work."

"I shouldn't have thought you'd have been so particularly joyful."

"Oh, the joy was in the music," said Laddie. "That was a whistle to keep up my courage. The joy was in the song, not in me! Last week was black enough for me to satisfy the most exacting pessimist."

"I wish you might have seen the figure you cut! That fine team, flower bedecked, and the continuous concert!"

"But I did!" cried Laddie. "We have mirrors. That song can't be beaten. I know this team is all right, and I'm not dwarfed or disfigured. That was the pageant of summer pa.s.sing in review. It represented the tilling of the soil; the sowing of seed, garnering to come later. You buy corn and wheat, don't you? They are vastly necessary. Much more so than the settling of quarrels that never should have taken place. Do you think your daughter found the spectacle at all moving?"

"d.a.m.n you, sir, what I should do, is to lay this whip across your shoulders!" cried Mr. Pryor.

But if you will believe it, he was laughing again.

"I prefer that you don't," said Laddie, "or on Ranger either. See how he likes being gentled."

Then he straightened and drew a deep breath.

"Mr. Pryor," he said, "as man to man, I have got this to say to you--and you may use your own discretion about repeating it to your daughter: I can offer her six feet of as sound manhood as you can find on G.o.d's footstool. I never in my whole life have had enough impure blood in my body to make even one tiny eruption on my skin. I never have been ill a day in my life. I never have touched a woman save as I lifted and cared for my mother, and hers, or my sisters. As to my family and education she can judge for herself. I offer her the first and only love of my heart. She objects to farming, because she says it is dirty, offensive work. There are parts of it that are dirty. Thank G.o.d, it only soils the body, and that can be washed. To delve and to dive into, and to study and to brood over the bigger half of the law business of any city is to steep your brain in, and smirch your soul with, such dirt as I would die before I'd make an occupation of touching. Will you kindly tell her that word for word, and that I asked you to?"

Mr. Pryor was standing before I saw him rise. He said those awful words again, but between them he cried: "You're right! It's the truth! It's the eternal truth!"

"It IS the truth," said Laddie. "I've only to visit the offices, and examine the business of those of my family living by law, to KNOW that it's the truth. Of course there's another side! There are times when there are great opportunities to do good; I recognize that. To some these may seem to overbalance that to which I object. If they do, all right. I am merely deciding for myself. Once and for all, for me it is land. It is born in me to love it, to handle it easily, to get the best results from stock. I am going to take the Merriweather place adjoining ours on the west, and yours on the south. I intend to lease it for ten years, with purchase privilege at the end, so that if I make of it what I plan, my work will not be lost to me. I had thought to fix up the place and begin farming. If Miss Pryor has any use whatever for me, and prefers stock, that is all right with me. I'll go into the same business she finds suitable for you. I can start in a small way and develop. I can afford a maid for her from the beginning, but I couldn't clothe her as she has been accustomed to being dressed, for some time. I would do my best, however. I know what store my mother sets by being well gowned. And as a husband, I can offer your daughter as loving consideration as woman ever received at the hands of man.

Provided by some miracle I could win her consent, would you even consider me, and such an arrangement?"

"Frankly sir," said Mr. Pryor, "I have reached the place where I would be----" whenever you come to a long black line like that, it means that he just roared a lot of words father never said, and never will--"glad to! To tell the truth, the thing you choose to jestingly refer to as 'tinware'--I hope later to convince of the indelicacy of such allusion--would place you in England on a social level above any we ever occupied, or could hope to. Your education equals ours. You are a physical specimen to be reckoned with, and I believe what you say of yourself. There's something so clean and manly about you, it amounts to confirmation. A woman should set her own valuation on that; and the height of it should correspond with her knowledge of the world."

"Thank you!" said Laddie. "You are more than kind! more than generous!"

"As to the arrangements you could make for Pamela," said Mr. Pryor, "she's all we have. Everything goes to her, ultimately. She has her stipulated allowance now; whether in my house or yours, it would go with her. Surely you wouldn't be so callous as to object to our giving her anything that would please us!"

"Why should I?" asked Laddie. "That's only natural on your part. Your child is your child; no matter where or what it is, you expect to exercise a certain amount of loving care over it. My father and mother constantly send things to their children absent from home, and they take much pleasure in doing it. That is between you and your daughter, of course. I shouldn't think of interfering. But in the meantime, unless Miss Pryor has been converted to the beauties of plowing through my continuous performance of over a week, I stand now exactly where I did before, so far as she is concerned. If you and Mrs. Pryor have no objection to me, if you feel that you could think of me, or find for me any least part of a son's place in your hearts, I believe I should know how to appreciate it, and how to go to work to make myself worthy of it."

Mr. Pryor sat down so suddenly, the rail almost broke. I thought the truth was, that he had heart trouble, himself. He stopped up, choked on things, flopped around, and turned so white. I suppose he thought it was womanish, and a sign of weakness, and so he didn't tell, but I bet anything that he had it--bad!

"I'll try to make the little fool see!" he said.

"Gently, gently! You won't help me any in that mood," said Laddie.

"The chances are that Miss Pryor repeated what she heard from you long ago, and what she knows you think and feel, unless you've changed recently."

"That's the amount of it!" cried Mr. Pryor. "All my life I've had a lot of beastly notions in my head about rank, and cla.s.s, and here they don't amount to a d.a.m.n! There's no place for them. Things are different. Your mother, a grand, good woman, opened my eyes to many things recently, and I get her viewpoint--clearly, and I agree with her, and with you, sir!--I agree with you!"

"I am more than glad," said Laddie. "You certainly make a friend at court. Thank you very much!"

"And you will come----?"

"The instant Miss Pryor gives me the slightest sign that I am wanted, and will be welcomed by her, I'll come like a Dakota blizzard! Flos can hump herself on time for once."

"But you won't come until she does?"

"Man alive! I can't!" cried Laddie. "Your daughter said positively exactly what she meant. It was unexpected and it hit me so hard I didn't try to argue. I simply took her at her word, her very explicit word."

"Fool!" cried Mr. Pryor. "The last thing on earth any woman ever wants or expects is for a man to take her at her word."

"What?" cried Laddie.

"She had what she said in her mind of course, but what she wanted was to be argued out of it! She wanted to be convinced!"

"I think not! She was entirely too convincing herself," said Laddie.

"It's my guess that she has thought matters over, and that her mind is made up; but I would take it as a mighty big favour if you would put that little piece of special pleading squarely up to her. Will you?"

"Yes," said Mr. Pryor, "I will. I'll keep cool and do my best, but I am so unfortunate in my temper. I could manage slaves better than women. This time I'll be calm, and reason things out with her, or I'll blow out my brains."

"Don't you dare!" laughed Laddie. "You and I are going to get much pleasure, comfort and profit from this world, now that we have come to an understanding."

Mr. Pryor arose and held out his hand. Laddie grasped it tight, and they stood there looking straight at each other, while a lark on the fence post close by cried, "Spring o' ye-ar!" at them, over and over, but they never paid the least attention.

"You see," said Mr. Pryor, "I've been thinking things over deeply, deeply! ever since talking with your mother. I've cut myself off from going back to England, by sacrificing much of my property in hasty departure, if by any possibility I should ever want to return, and there is none, not the slightest! There's no danger of any one crossing the sea, and penetrating to this particular spot so far inland; we won't be molested! And lately--lately, despite the rawness, and the newness, there is something about the land that takes hold, after all. I should dislike leaving now! I found in watching some roots your mother gave me, that I wanted them to grow, that I very much hoped they would develop, and beautify our place with flowers, as yours is. I find myself watching them, watching them daily, and oftener, and there seems to be a sort of home feeling creeping around my heart. I wish Pamela would listen to reason! I wish she would marry you soon!

I wish there would be little children. Nothing else on earth would come so close to comforting my wife, and me also. Nothing! Go ahead, lad, plow away! I'll put your special pleading up to the girl."

He clasped Laddie's hand, mounted and rode back to the gate he had entered when he came. Laddie sat on the rail, so I climbed down beside him. He put his arm around me.

"Do I feel any better?" he asked dubiously.

"Of course you do!" I said stoutly. "You feel whole heaps, and stacks, and piles better. You haven't got him to fight any more, or Mrs.

Pryor. It's now only to convince the Princess about how it's all right to plow."

"Small matter, that!" said Laddie. "And easy! Just as simple and easy!"

"Have you asked the Fairies to help you?"

"Aye, aye, sir," said Laddie. "Also the winds, the flowers, the birds and the bees! I have asked everything on earth to help me except you, Little Sister. I wonder if I have been making a mistake there?"

"Are you mad at me, Laddie?"

"'Cause for why?"

"About the old crest thing!"

"Forget it!" laughed Laddie. "I have. And anyway, in the long run, I must be honest enough to admit that it may have helped. It seems to have had its influence with Mr. Pryor, no doubt it worked the same on Mrs. Pryor, and it may be that it was because she had so much more to bank on than she ever expected, that the Princess felt emboldened to make her demand. It may be, you can't tell! Anyway, it's very evident that it did no real harm. And forget my jesting, Chicken. A man can't always cry because there are tears in his heart. I think quite as much of that crest as you do. In the sum of human events, it is a big thing. No one admires a Crusader more than I. No one likes a good fight better. No Crusader ever put up a stiffer battle than I have in the past week while working in these fields. Every inch of them is battlefield, every furrow a separate conflict. Gaze upon the scene of my Waterloo! When June covers it with green, it will wave over the resting place of my slain heart!"