The Homesteaders Part 10

An hour later Allan returned, accompanied by George Grant, and operations in the field were resumed. Father and son were both anxious to make up for lost time, and they worked that night long after their usual hour for quitting. Just as the sun was setting George Grant left a last tank of water at the end of the field and started for home. As he pa.s.sed the buildings he saw Beulah in the garden, and leaned over the fence for a short talk with her. The girl was thankful the gathering dusk hid the colour of her cheeks. George continued on his way, but still the steady panting of the engine, louder now, it seemed, than during the day, came pulsing down on the calm night air. The long twilight dragged on; the light faded out of the east and south, and at last shone like the spread of a crimson fan only in the north-west. It was quite dark when the two men, tired and dusty, came in at the close of their long day's labour.

The table was set for two. "We have had our supper," Mary explained.

"We thought we wouldn't wait any longer."

"That's all right," said Harris, trying to be genial. But he found it harder than he had supposed. He was very tired, and somewhat embarra.s.sed following the unpleasantness at noon. He had no thought of apologizing, either to wife or daughter; on the contrary, he intended to make it quite clear to them that they had been at fault in the matter, but he would take his time about reopening the subject. By waiting a day or two before reproving them he would show that he was acting in a judicial spirit, and without any influence of temper. Still...it was provoking that there should be nothing to talk about.

When supper was finished Allan went to the stables to give final attention to the horses--a duty that had always fallen to Jim--and Harris, after a few minutes' quiet rest in his chair, began to remove his boots.

"The cows are not milked, John," said his wife. She tried to speak in a matter-of-fact way, but the tremor in her voice betrayed the import of the simple statement.

Harris paused with a boot half unlaced. While his recollection of Beulah's defiance was clear enough, it had not occurred to him that the girl actually would stand by her guns. He had told her that she would milk the cows tonight as usual, and he had a.s.sumed, as a matter of course, that she would do so. He was not accustomed to being disobeyed.

"Where's Beulah?" he demanded.

"I guess she's in her room."

Harris laced up his boot. Then he started upstairs.

"Don't be too hard on her, John," urged his wife, with a little catch in her voice.

"I won't be too hard on anybody," he replied curtly. "It's a strange thing you wouldn't see that she did as she was told. I suppose I have to plug away in the field until dark and then come in and do another half-day's work because my women folk are too lazy or stubborn to do it themselves."

If this outburst was intended to crush Mary Harris it had a very different effect. She seemed to straighten up under the attack; the colour came back to her cheeks, and her eyes were bright and defiant.

"John Harris," she said. "You know better than to say that your women folk are either lazy or stubborn, but there's a point where imposition, even the imposition of a husband, has to stop, and you've reached that point. You didn't have to stay in the field until dark.

There's another day coming, and the ploughing'll keep. It isn't like the harvest. It was just your own contrariness that kept you there.

You fired the best man you ever had to-day, in a fit of temper, and now you're trying to take it out on us."

Harris looked at her for a moment; then, without speaking, he continued up the stairs. The difficulties of his position were increasing; it was something new to be a.s.sailed from the bosom of his own family. He felt that he was being very unfairly used, but he had no intention of shrinking from his duty as a husband and father, even if its discharge should bring pain to all of them.

He found Beulah in her room, ostensibly reading.

"Why are the cows not milked?" he demanded.

"I thought I made it clear to you at noon that they wouldn't be milked by me," she answered, "and there didn't seem to be anybody else hankering for the job."

"Beulah," he said, trying to speak calmly, "don't you think this nonsense has gone far enough?"

"Too far," she agreed. "But you started it--let's see you stop it."

"Beulah," he said, with rising anger, "I won't allow you to talk to me like that. Remember I'm your father, and you've a right to do as you're told. Haven't I given you everything--given you a home, and all that, and are you goin' to defy me in my own house?"

"I don't want to defy you," she answered, "but if you're going to let your temper run away with you, you can put on the brakes yourself.

And as for all you've done for me--maybe I'm ungrateful, but it doesn't look half so big from my side of the fence."

"Well, what more do you want?" he demanded.

"For one thing, I wouldn't mind having a father."

"What do you mean? Ain't I your father?"

"No!" she cried. "No! No! There's no father here. You're just the boss--the foreman on the farm. You board with mother and me. We see you at meal-times. We wouldn't see you then if you didn't have to make use of us in that way. If you have a spare hour you go to town.

You're always so busy, busy, with your little things, that you have no time for big things."

"I didn't know it was an offence to be busy," he answered. "It's work that makes money, and I notice you can spend your share. You're never so haughty about me workin' when you want a ten-dollar bill for somethin'. Work may be a disgrace all right from your point of view, but money isn't, and in this country you don't get much of one without the other."

"Now, Dad," she protested. "You're taking me up wrong. I don't think work is a disgrace, and I'm willing to work as hard as anyone, but I do think it's a shame that you should be thinking only of work, work, work, when you don't need to. I'd like to see you think about living instead of working. And we're not living--not really living, you know--we're just existing. Just making little twenty-four hour cycles that don't get us anywhere, except older. Don't you see what I mean?

We're living all in the flesh, like an animal. When you feed the horses and put them under shelter you can't do anything more for them. But when you feed and shelter your daughter you have only half provided for her, and it's the other half, the starving half, that refuses to starve any longer."

"I'm not kickin' on religion, if that's what you mean, Beulah," he said. "You get goin' to church as often as you like, and--"

"Oh, it's not religion," she protested. "At least, it's not just going to church, and things like that, although I guess it is a more real religion, if we just understood. What are we here for, anyway?

Come now, you're a man of sense and experience, and you must have settled that question in your own mind long ago. What's the answer?"

"Well, I'm here just now to tell you those cows are to be milked before--"

"Yes, dodge it! You've dodged that question so long you daren't face it. But there must be an answer somewhere, or there wouldn't be the question. There's Riles, now; he doesn't know there is such a question. He takes it for granted we're here to grab money. And then, there's Grants. They know there is such a question, and I'm sure that to some extent they've answered it. You know, I like them, but I never go into their house that I don't feel out of place. I feel like they have something that I haven't--something that makes them very rich and shows me how very poor I am. And it's embarra.s.sing to feel poor among rich folks. Why, to-night George Grant stopped on his way home to say a word to me, and what do you suppose he said? Nothing about the weather, or the neighbours, or the crops. He asked me what I thought of the Venezuelan treaty. Of course I'd never heard of such a thing, but I said I hoped it would be for the best, or something like that, but I was ashamed--so ashamed he might have seen it in the dusk. You see, they're living--and we're existing."

If Beulah hoped by such argument to persuade her father, or even to influence him, she was doomed to disappointment. Harris listened to her patiently enough at first, but the conviction dawned upon him that she had been reading some silly nonsense that had temporarily distorted her young mind. Such foolishness, if allowed to take root, might have disastrous results. His daughter must learn to centre her mind on her work, and not be led away by whimsical notions that had no place in a busy life.

"You're talking a good deal of nonsense, Beulah," he said. "When you get older these questions won't worry you. In the meantime, your duty is to do as you're told. Right now that means milk the cows. I'll give you five minutes to get started."

Harris went to his room. A little later Beulah, with a light cloak about her shoulders and a suitcase in her hand, slipped quietly down the front stairs and out into the night.

CHAPTER IX

CRUMBLING CASTLES

At the foot of the garden Beulah paused irresolute, the suit-case swinging gently in her hand. She had made no plans for the decisive step events of the day had forced upon her, but the step itself she felt to be inevitable. She was not in love with Jim Travers; she had turned the whole question over in her mind that afternoon, weighing it with judicial impartiality, supposing all manner of situations to try out her own emotions, and she had come to the conclusion that Travers was merely an incident in her life, a somewhat inspiring incident, perhaps, but an incident none the less. The real thing--the vital matter which demanded some exceptional protest--was the narrow and ever narrowing horizon of her father, a horizon bounded only by material gain. Against this narrowing band of outlook her vigorous spirit, with its dumb, insistent stretchings forth to the infinite, rebelled. It was not a matter of filial duty; it was not a matter of love; to her it was a matter of existence. She saw her ideals dimly enough at best, and she would burst every cord of affection and convention rather than allow them to be submerged in the grey, surrounding murk of materialism.

Perhaps it was custom and the subtle pullings of a.s.sociation that drew her feet down the path across the bench to the edge of the stream that gurgled gently in the still night. She stood on the gravel by the water's edge, packed firm by the wagon-wheels of twenty-five years, and watched her image as it swayed gently in the smoothly running current. There was no moon, but the stars shone down in their midnight brilliance, and the water lay white and glistening against the black vagueness of the bushy banks. She stooped and let it fondle her fingers. It was warm and smooth...But it was shallow at the ford...Farther up it was quite deep... The stars blinked a strange challenge from the sky, as though to say, "Here is the tree of knowledge, if you dare to drink thereof."

At length she turned her back on the stream and retraced her steps up the path. The house loomed very sombre and still in the quiet night.

A light shone dimly from her father's window. At intervals a deep, contented sighing came from the cows in the barnyard. She took the path past the house and down to the corral, where she paused, her ear arrested by the steady drone of milking. A lantern sitting on the black earth, cast a little circle of light, and threw a docile cow in dreadful silhouette against the barn. And by that dim light Beulah discerned the bent form of her mother, milking.

"Mother, this is too much!" the girl exclaimed.

Her mother started and looked up. "You're leaving us, Beulah?" she asked. There was no reproach in her voice, nor even surprise, but a kind of quiet sorrow. "I couldn't let the poor brutes suffer," she explained.

"Yes, I'm leaving," said Beulah. "I can't stand it any longer."

The mother sighed. "I've seen it coming for some time," she said, at length. "I suppose it can't be helped."