Winston of the Prairie Part 21

In the meanwhile Winston, crossing the room, took a vacant place at Maud Barrington's side. She turned her head a moment and looked at him.

Winston nodded. "Yes, I heard," he said. "Why did you do it?"

Maud Barrington made a little gesture of impatience. "That is quite unnecessary. You know I sent you."

"Yes," said Winston, a trifle dryly, "I see. You would have felt mean if you hadn't defended me?"

"No," said the girl, with a curious smile. "That was not exactly the reason, but we cannot talk too long here. Dane is anxious to take us home in his new buggy, but it would apparently be a very tight fit for three. Will you drive me over?"

Winston only nodded, for Mrs. Macdonald approached in pursuit of him, but he spent the rest of the evening in a state of expectancy, and Maud Barrington fancied that his hard hands were suspiciously unresponsive as she took them when he helped her into the Silverdale wagon--a vehicle a strong man could have lifted, and in no way resembling its English prototype. The team was mettlesome, the lights of Macdonald's homestead soon faded behind them, and they were racing with many a lurch and jolt straight as the crow flies across the prairie.

There was no moon, but the stars shone far up in the soft indigo, and the gra.s.ses whirled back in endless ripples to the humming wheels, dimmed to the dusky blue that suffused the whole intermerging sweep of earth and sky. The sweetness of wild peppermint rose through the coolness of the dew, and the voices of the wilderness were part of the silence that was but the perfect balance of the nocturnal harmonies.

The two who knew and loved the prairie could pick out each one of them.

Nor did it seem that there was any need of speech on such a night, but at last Winston turned with a little smile to his companion, as he checked the horses on the slope of a billowy rise.

"One feels diffident about intruding on this great quietness," he said.

"Still, I fancy you had a purpose in asking me to drive you home."

"Yes," said the girl, with a curious gentleness. "In the first place, though I know it isn't necessary with you, I want to thank you. I made Dane tell me, and you have done all I wished--splendidly."

Winston laughed. "Well, you see, it naturally came easy to me."

Maud Barrington noticed the trace of grimness in his voice. "Please try to overlook our unkindness," she said. "Is it really needful to keep reminding me? And how was I to know what you were, when I had only heard that wicked story?"

Winston felt a little thrill run through him, for which reason he looked straight in front of him and shifted his grasp on the reins.

Disdainful and imperious as she was at times, he knew there was a wealth of softer qualities in his companion now. Her daintiness in thought and person, and honesty of purpose, appealed to him, while that night her mere physical presence had an effect that was almost bewildering. For a moment he wondered vaguely how far a man might dare to go, with what fate had thrust upon him, and then with a little shiver saw once more the barrier of deceit and imposture.

"You believe it was not a true one?" he asked.

"Of course," said Maud Barrington. "How could it be? And you have been very patient under our suspicions. Now, if you still value the good-will you once asked for, it is yours absolutely."

"But you may still hear unpleasant stories about me," said Winston, with a note the girl had not heard before in his voice.

"I should not believe them," she said.

"Still," persisted Winston, "if the tales were true?"

Maud Barrington did nothing by halves. "Then I should remember that there is always so much we do not know which would put a different color on any story, and I believe they could never be true again."

Winston checked a little gasp of wonder and delight, and Maud Barrington looked away across the prairie. She was not usually impulsive and seldom lightly bestowed gifts that were worth the having, and the man knew that the faith in him she had confessed to was the result of a conviction that would last until he himself shattered it.

Then, in the midst of his elation, he shivered again and drew the lash across the near horse's back. The wonder and delight he felt had suddenly gone.

"Few would venture to predict as much. Now and then I feel that our deeds are scarcely contrived by our own will, and one could fancy our parts had been thrust upon us in a grim joke," he said. "For instance, isn't it strange that I should have a share in the rousing of Silverdale to a sense of its responsibilities? Lord, what I could make of it, if fate had but given me a fair opportunity!"

He spoke almost fiercely, but the words did not displease the girl.

The forceful ring in his voice set something thrilling within her, and she knew by this time that his a.s.sertions seldom went beyond the fact.

"But you will have the opportunity, and we need you here," she said.

"No," said Winston slowly. "I am afraid not. Still, I will finish the work I see in front of me. That at least--one cannot hope for the unattainable."

Maud Barrington was sensible of a sudden chill. "Still, if one has strength and patience, is anything quite unattainable?"

Winston looked out across the prairie, and for a moment the demons of pride and ambition rioted within him. He knew there were in him the qualities that compel success, and the temptation to stretch out a daring hand and take all he longed for grew almost overmastering.

Still, he also knew how strong the innate prejudices of caste and tradition are in most women of his companion's station, and she had never hidden one aspect or her character from him. It was with a smothered groan he realized that if he flung the last shred of honor aside and grasped the forbidden fruit it would turn to bitterness in his mouth.

"Yes," he said very slowly. "There is a limit which only fools would pa.s.s."

Then there was silence for a while, until, as they swept across the rise, Maud Barrington laughed as she pointed to the lights that blinked in the hollow, and Winston realized that the barrier between them stood firm again.

"Our views seldom coincide for very long, but there is something else to mention before we reach the Grange," she said. "You must have paid out a good many dollars for the plowing of your land and mine, and n.o.body's exchequer is inexhaustible at Silverdale. Now I want you to take a check from me."

"It is necessary that I should?"

"Of course," said the girl, with a trace of displeasure.

Winston laughed. "Then I shall be prepared to hand you my account whenever you demand it."

He did not look at his companion again, but with a tighter grip than there was any need for on the reins, sent the light wagon jolting down the slope to Silverdale Grange.

CHAPTER XV

THE UNEXPECTED

The sun beat down on the prairie, which was already losing its flush of green, but it was cool where Maud Barrington and her aunt stood in the shadow of the bluff by Silverdale Grange. The birches, ta.s.seled now with whispering foliage, divided the homestead front the waste which would lie white and desolate under the parching heat, and that afternoon it seemed to the girl that the wall of green shut out more than the driving dust and sun-glare from the Grange, for where the trees were thinner she could see moving specks of men and horses athwart the skyline.

They had toiled in the sun-baked furrow since the first flush of crimson streaked the prairie's rim, and the chill of dusk would fall upon the gra.s.ses before their work was done. Those men who bore the burden and heat of the day were, the girl knew, helots now, but there was in them the silent vigor and something of the somberness of the land of rock and forest they came from, and a time would come when others would work for them. Winning slowly, holding grimly, they were moving on, while secure in its patrician tranquillity; Silverdale stood still, and Maud Barrington smiled curiously as she glanced down at the long white robe that clung very daintily about her and then towards her companions in the tennis field. Her apparel had cost many dollars in Montreal, and there was a joyous irresponsibility in the faces of those she watched.

"It is a little unequal, isn't it, aunt?" she said. "One feels inclined to wonder what we have done that we should have exemption from the charge laid upon the first tiller of the soil that we, and the men who are plodding through the dust there, are descended from."

Miss Barrington laughed a little as she glanced with a nod of comprehension at the distant toilers, and more gravely towards the net.

Merry voices came up to her through the shadows of the trees as English lad and English maiden, lissom and picturesque in many-hued jackets and light dresses, flitted across the little square of velvet green. The men had followed the harrow and seeder a while that morning. Some of them, indeed, had for a few hours driven a team, and then left the rest to the hired hands, for the stress and sweat of effort that was to turn the wilderness into a granary was not for such as they.

"Don't you think it is all made up to those others?" she asked.

"In one sense--yes," said the girl. "Of course, one can see that all effort must have its idealistic aspect, and there may be men who find their compensation in the thrill of the fight, and the knowledge of work well done when they rest at night. Still, I fancy most of them only toil to eat, and their views are not revealed to us. We are, you see, women--and we live at Silverdale."

Her aunt smiled again. "How long is it since the plow crossed the Red River, and what is Manitoba now? How did those mile furrows come there, and who drove the road that takes the wheat out through the granite of the Superior sh.o.r.e? It was more than their appet.i.tes that impelled those men, my dear. Still, it is scarcely wise to expect too much when one meets them, for though one could feel it is presumptuous to forgive its deficiencies, the Berserk type of manhood is not conspicuous for its refinement."

For no apparent reason Maud Barrington evaded her aunt's gaze. "You,"

she said dryly, "have forgiven one of that type a good deal already, but, at least, we have never seen him when the fit was upon him."

Miss Barrington laughed. "Still, I have no doubt that, sooner or later, you will enjoy the spectacle."

Just then, a light wagon came up behind them, and when one of the hired men helped them in they swept out of the cool shade into the dust and glare of the prairie, and when some little time later, with the thud of hoofs and rattle of wheels softened by the bleaching sod, they rolled down a rise, there was spread out before them evidence of man's activity.