Masters of the Wheat-Lands Part 22

AGATHA PROVES OBDURATE

It was two days later when Agatha, coming back from a stroll across the prairie with the two little girls, found Mrs. Hastings awaiting her at the homestead door.

"I'll take the kiddies. Harry Wyllard's here, and he seems quite anxious to see you, though I don't know what he wants," she said.

She flashed a searching glance at the girl, whose face, however, remained impa.s.sive. It was not often that Agatha's composure broke down.

"Don't wait," she added, "you had better go in this minute. Allen has been arguing with him the last half-hour, and can't get any sense into him. It seems to me the man's crazy; but he might, perhaps, listen to you."

"I think that is scarcely likely," replied Agatha.

Mrs. Hastings made a sign of impatience. "Then," she rejoined, "it's a pity. Anyway, if he speaks to you about his project you can tell him that it's altogether unreasonable."

She drew aside, and Agatha walked into the room in which she had had her painful interview with Gregory. Wyllard, who rose as she came in, stood quietly watching her.

"Nellie Hastings or her husband has been telling you what they think of my idea?" he said questioningly.

"Yes," Agatha answered. "Their opinion evidently hasn't much weight with you."

"Haven't you a message for me?" he asked. "You were sent to denounce my folly--and you can't do it. If you trusted your own impulses you would give me your benediction instead." He smiled down at her.

Agatha, who was troubled with a sense of regret, saw a suggestive wistfulness in his face.

"No," she said slowly, "I can't denounce your folly, as they call your decision to go North. For one reason, I have no right of any kind to force my views on you."

"You told Mrs. Hastings that?"

It seemed an unwarranted question, but the girl admitted the truth frankly.

"In one sense I did. I suggested that there was no reason why you should listen to me."

Wyllard smiled again. "Nellie and her husband are good friends of mine, but sometimes our friends are a little too officious. Anyway, it doesn't count. If you had had that right, you would have told me to go."

Agatha felt the warm blood rise to her cheeks. It seemed to her that he had paid her a great and sincere compliment in taking it for granted that if she had loved him she would still have bidden him undertake his perilous duty.

"Ah," she said, "I don't know. Perhaps I should not have been brave enough."

It was not a judicious answer. She realized that, but she felt that she must speak with unhesitating candor.

"After all," she added, "can you be quite sure that this is your duty?"

Wyllard kept his eye on her. "No," he said, "I can't. In fact, when I sit down to think I can see at least a dozen reasons why it doesn't concern me. In a case of this kind that's always easy. It's just borne in upon me--I don't know how--that I have to go."

Agatha crossed to the window and sat down. He leaned upon a chairback looking at her gravely.

"Well," he continued, "we'll go on a little further. It seems better that I should make what's in my mind quite clear to you. You see, Captain Dampier and I start in a week."

Agatha was conscious of a shock of dismay.

"We may be back before the winter, but it's also quite likely that we may be ice-nipped before our work is through, and in that case it would be a year at least before we reach Vancouver," he went on steadily after a little pause. "In fact, there's a certain probability that all of us may leave our bones up there. Now, there's a thing I must ask you. Is it only a pa.s.sing trouble that stands between you and Gregory? Are you still fond of him?"

Agatha's heart beat fast. It would have been a relief to a.s.sure herself that she was as fond of Gregory as she had been, but she could not do it.

"That is a point on which I cannot answer you," she declared in a voice that trembled.

"We'll let it go at that. The fact that Gregory sent me over for you implied a certain obligation. How far events have cleared me of it I don't know--and you don't seem willing to tell me. But I believe there is now less cause than there was for me to thrust my own wishes into the background, and, as I start in another week, the situation has forced my hand. I can't wait as I had meant to do, and it would be a vast relief to know that I had made your future safer than it is before I go. Will you marry me at the settlement the morning I start?"

Half-conscious, as she was, of the unselfishness which had prompted this suggestion, Agatha faced him in hot anger.

"Can you suppose for a moment that I would agree to that?" she asked.

"Wait," he pleaded. "Try to look at it calmly. First of all, I want you.

You know that--though you have never shown me any tenderness, you can't doubt it--but I can't stay to win your liking. I must go away. As things stand, your future is uncertain; but as my wife it would, at least, be safe. However badly the man I leave in charge of the Range may manage there would be something saved out of the wreck, and I would like to make that something yours. As I said, I may be away a year, perhaps eighteen months, and I may never come back. If I don't return the fact that you would bear my name could cause you no great trouble. It would lay no restraint on you in any way."

Agatha looked him in the eyes, and spoke with quick intensity. "We can't contemplate your not coming back. It's unthinkable."

"Thank you," said Wyllard, still with the grave quietness she wondered at. "Then I'm not sure that my turning up again would greatly complicate the situation. There would, at least, be one way out of the difficulty.

You wouldn't find your position intolerable if I could make you fond of me."

Agatha broke into a little, high-strung laugh that was near to weeping.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "aren't you taking too much for granted? Am I really to believe you are making this fantastic offer seriously? Do you suppose I would marry you--for your possessions?"

"My proposition does sound cold-blooded. Perhaps it is in one way, but you wouldn't always find me so practical and calculating. Just now, because my hand is forced, I am only antic.i.p.ating things. If I live, you will some day have to choose between Gregory and me. In that case he must hold his own if he can."

"Against what you have offered me?" she flung the question at him.

He looked at her with his face set.

"I expect I deserved that. I wanted to make you safe. It's the most pressing difficulty."

The resentment was still in the girl's eyes.

"So far as I am concerned, you seem to believe it is the only difficulty. Oh, do you imagine that an offer of the kind you have made me, made as you have made it, would lead anyone to love you?"

Wyllard spoke with a new tenderness. "When I first saw your picture, and when I saw you afterwards, I loved your gracious quietness. Now you seem to have lost your repose and I love you better as you are. There is one thing, Agatha, that I must ask again, and it's your duty to tell me. Are you fonder of Gregory than you feel you ever could be of me?"

Agatha's eyes fell. She felt that she could not look at him nor could she answer his question honestly as she desired to answer it.

"At least I am bound to him until he releases me."

"Ah!" responded Wyllard, "that is what I was most afraid of. All along it hampered me, and in it you have the reason for my cold, business-like talk to-day. It is another reason why I should go away."

"For fear that you should tempt me from my duty?"

Wyllard's expression changed, and there crept into his eyes a gleam of the pa.s.sion that he was smothering.

"My dear," he said, "I seem to know that I could make you break faith with that man. You belong to me. For three years you have been everywhere with me. Now I must go away and Gregory will have a clear field, but the probability is in favor of my coming back again, and then, if he has failed to make the most of his chance, I'll enforce my claim."