The Land of Promise Part 36

When, as was natural at first, she felt discouraged over her little domestic failures, she found these neighborly visits a great tonic.

Mrs. Sharp was always ready to give advice when appealed to. And unlike Gertie, she never expressed astonishment at her visitor's ignorance, or impatience with her shortcomings. These became more and more infrequent.

Nora made up for her total lack of experience by an intelligent willingness to be taught. There was a certain stimulation in the thought that she was learning to manage her own house, that would have been lacking while at her brother's even if Gertie had displayed a more agreeable willingness to impart her own knowledge.

Nora had always been fond of children, and she found the Sharp children unusually interesting. It was curious to see how widely the ideas of this, the first generation born in the new country, differed, not only from those of their parents, but from what they must have inevitably been if they had remained in the environment that would have been theirs had they been born and brought up back in England.

All of their dreams as to what they were going to do when they grew to manhood were colored and shaped by the outdoor life they had been accustomed to. They were to be farmers and cattle raisers on a large scale. Mrs. Sharp used to shake her head sometimes as she heard these grandiloquent plans, but Nora could see that she was secretly both proud and pleased. After all, why should not these dreams be realized?

Everything was possible to the children of this new and wonderful country, if they were only industrious and ambitious.

"I don't know, I'm sure, what their poor dear grandfather would have said if he had lived to hear them," she used to say sometimes to Nora.

"_He_ used to think that there was nothing so genteel as having a good shop. He quite looked down on farming folk. Still, everything is different out here, ideas as well as everything else, and I'm not at all sure they won't be better off in the end."

In which notion Nora secretly agreed with her. To picture these healthy, st.u.r.dy, outdoor youngsters confined to a little dingy shop such as their mother had been used to in her own childhood was impossible, as she recalled to her mind the pale, anemic-looking little souls she had occasionally seen during her stay in London. Was not any personal sacrifice worth seeing one's children grow up so strong and healthy, so manly and independent?

This, then, was the true inwardness of it all; the thing that dignified and enn.o.bled this life of toil and hardship, deprived of almost all the things which she had always regarded as necessary, that the welfare, prosperity and happiness of generations yet to come might be reared on this foundation laid by self-denial and deprivation.

She felt almost humbled in the presence of this simple, unpretentious, kindly woman who had borne so much without complaint that her children might have wider opportunities for usefulness and happiness than she had ever known.

Not that Mrs. Sharp, herself, seemed to think that she was doing anything remarkable. She took it all as a matter of course. It was only when something brought up the subject of the difficulties of learning to do without this or that, that she alluded to the days when she also was inexperienced and had had to learn for herself without anyone to advise or help her.

Miles away from any help other than her husband could give her, she had borne six children and buried one. And although the days of their worst poverty seemed safely behind them, they had been able to save but little, so that they still felt themselves at the mercies of the changing seasons. Given one or two good years to harvest their crops, they might indeed consider themselves almost beyond the danger point.

But with seven mouths to feed, one could not afford to lose a single crop.

With her head teeming with all the new ideas that Mrs. Sharp's experiences furnished, Nora felt that the time was by no means as wasted as she had once thought it would be. There was no reason, after all, that she should sink to the level of a mere domestic drudge. And if this part of her life was not to endure forever, it would not have been entirely barren, since it furnished her with much new material to ponder over. After all, was it really more narrow than her life at Tunbridge Wells? In her heart, she acknowledged that it was not.

To Frank, also, the winter brought a broader outlook. He had looked upon Nora's little refinements of speech and delicate point of view, when he had first known her at her brother's, as finicky, to say the least. All women had fool notions about most things; this one seemed to have more than the average share, that was all. He secretly shared Gertie's opinion that women the world over were all alike in the essentials. He had always been of the opinion that Nora had good stuff in her which would come out once she had been licked into shape. Yet he found himself not only learning to admire her for those same niceties but found himself unconsciously imitating her mannerisms of speech.

Then, too, after they began the habit of reading in the evenings, he found that she had no intention of ridiculing his ignorance and lack of knowledge in matters on which she seemed to him to be wonderfully informed. That they did not by any means always agree in the conclusions they arrived at, in place of irritating him, as he would have thought, he found only stimulating to his imagination. To attack and try to undermine her position, as long as their arguments were conducted with perfect good nature on either side, as they always were, diverted him greatly. And he was secretly pleased when she defended herself with a skill and address that defeated his purpose.

All the little improvements in the shack were a source of never-ending pride and pleasure to him. Often when at work he found himself proudly comparing his place with its newly added prettiness with the more gaudy ornaments of Mrs. Sharp's or even with Gertie's more pretentious abode.

And it was not altogether the pride of ownership that made them suffer in the comparison.

Looking back on the days before Nora's advent seemed like a horrible nightmare from which he was thankful to have awakened. Once in a while he indulged himself in speculating as to how it would feel to go back to the old shiftless, untidy days of his bachelorhood. But he rarely allowed himself to entertain the idea of her leaving, seriously. He was like a child, snuggly tucked in his warm bed who, listening to the howling of the wind outside, pictures himself exposed to its harshness in order to luxuriate the more in its warmth and comfort.

But when, as sometimes happened, he could not close the door of his mind to the thought of how he should ever learn to live without her again, it brought an anguish that was physical as well as mental. Once, looking up from her book, Nora had surprised him sitting with closed eye, his face white and drawn with pain.

Her fright, and above all her pretty solicitude even after he had a.s.suaged her fears by explaining that he occasionally suffered from an old strain which he had sustained a few years before while working in the lumber camps, tried his composure to the utmost.

For days, the memory of the look in her eyes as she bent over him remained in his mind. But he was careful not to betray himself again.

It was to prevent any repet.i.tion that he first resorted to working over something while she was reading. While doubly occupied with listening and working with his hands, he found that his mind was less apt to go off on a tangent and indulge in painful and profitless speculations.

For, after all, as she had said, how could he prevent her going if her heart was set on it? That she had given no outward sign of being unhappy or discontented argued nothing. She was far too shrewd to spend her strength in unavailing effort. Pride and ordinary prudence would counsel waiting for a more favorable opportunity than had yet been afforded her.

She would not soon forget the lesson of the night he had beaten down her opposition and dragged her pride in the dust.

And would she ever forgive it? That was a question that he asked himself almost daily without finding any answer. There was nothing in her manner to show that she harbored resentment or that she was brooding over plans for escaping from the bondage of her life. But women, in his experience, were deep, even cunning. Once given a strong purpose, women like Nora, pursued it to the end. Women of this type were not easily diverted by side issues as men so often were.

For weeks he lived in daily apprehension of Ed's arrival. There was no one else she could turn to, and evoking his aid did not necessarily argue that she must submit again to Gertie's grudging hospitality. Ed might easily, unknown to his masterful better-half, furnish the funds to return to England. She had not written him that he knew of. As a matter of fact, she had not, but she might have given the letter to Sid Sharp to post on one of his not infrequent trips into Prentice. It would only have been by chance that Sid would speak of so trifling a matter. He was much too proud to question him.

But as time went on and no Ed appeared, he began, if not exactly to hope that, after all she was finding the life not unbearable, at least her leaving was a thing of the more or less remote future. He summoned all his philosophy to his aid. Perhaps by the time she did make up her mind to quit him he would have acquired some little degree of resignation, or at least would not be caught as unprepared as he frankly confessed himself to be at the moment.

The spring, which brought many new occupations, mostly out of doors, had pa.s.sed, and summer was past its zenith. Frank had worked untiringly from dawn to dark, so wearied that he frequently found it difficult to keep his eyes open until supper was over. But his enthusiasm never flagged.

If everything went as well as he hoped, the additional quarter-section was a.s.sured. For some reason or other, possibly because he was beginning to feel a reaction after the hard work of the summer, Nora fancied that his spirits were less high than usual. He talked less of the coveted land than was his custom. She, herself, had never, in all her healthy life, felt so glowing with health and strength. She, too, had worked hard, finding almost every day some new task to perform. But aside from the natural fatigue at night, which long hours of dreamless sleep entirely dissipated, she felt all the better for her new experiences.

For one thing, her steady improvement in all the arts of the good housewife made her daily routine much easier as well as giving her much secret satisfaction. Never in her life had she looked so well. The summer sun had given her a color which was most becoming.

CHAPTER XVI

One afternoon, shortly after dinner, she had gone out to gather a nosegay of wild flowers to brighten her little living-room. She was busily engaged in arranging them in a pudding bowl, smiling to think that her hand had lost none of the cunning to which Miss Wickham had always paid grudging tribute, even if her improvised vase was of homely ware, when she heard her husband's step at the door. It was so unusual for him to return at this hour that for a moment she was almost startled.

"_I_ didn't know you were about."

"Oh," he said easily, "I ain't got much to do to-day. I've been out with Sid Sharp and a man come over from Prentice."

"From Prentice?"

Having arranged her flowers to her satisfaction, she stepped back to view the effect. At that moment her husband's eye fell on them.

"Say, what you got there?"

"Aren't they pretty? I picked them just now. They're so gay and cheerful."

"Very." But his tone had none of the enthusiasm with which he usually greeted her efforts to beautify the house.

"A few flowers make the shack look more bright and cozy."

He took in the room with a glance that approved of everything.

"You've made it a real home, Nora. Mrs. Sharp never stops talking of how you've done it. She was saying only the other day it was because you was a lady. It does make a difference, I guess, although I didn't use to think _so_."

Nora gave him a smile full of indulgence.

"I'm glad you haven't found me quite a hopeless failure."

"I guess I've never been so comfortable in all my life. It's what I always said: once English girls _do_ take to the life, they make a better job of it than anybody."

"What's the man come over from Prentice for?" asked Nora. They were approaching a subject she always avoided.

"I guess you ain't been terribly happy here, my girl," he said gravely, unmindful of her question.

"What on earth makes you say that?"

"You've got too good a memory, I guess, and you ain't ever forgiven me for that first night."

It was the first time he had alluded to the subject for months. Would he never understand that she wanted to forget it! He might know that it always irritated her.

"I made up my mind very soon that I must accept the consequences of what I'd done. I've tried to fall in with your ways," she said coldly.