Part 16 (1/2)
He rose and stood with his hand on a chair-back, looking steadily at her; and she noticed with half-grudging approval the strength of his figure and the resolution in his quiet, brown face.
”The trouble is that you can't continue as you are. Allenwood's threatened from outside, and I'm not sure it's safe within.”
”Is that your business?”
The cold pride in her tone hurt, for it implied that she regarded him as an intruding stranger.
”In a way, yes; but we'll let that drop. If I could have pleased you by giving up a personal advantage, I'd have gladly done so; but this is a bigger thing. It isn't a matter of being content with a smaller crop; it's letting land that was meant to be worked lie idle, wasting useful effort, and trying to hold up a state of things that can't last. If I give way, I'll be going back on all I believe in and betraying a trust.”
Beatrice laughed scornfully; and saw him wince.
”I want you to understand what's behind this movement,” he continued gravely. ”Your people can't keep Allenwood for a place of amus.e.m.e.nt much longer, and some of those who see this have asked my help. I've promised and I can't draw back. Besides, to break new soil and raise good wheat where only the wild gra.s.ses grow is the work I was meant for; the one thing worth while I'm able to do. I'd feel mean and ashamed if I held off and let the waste go on.”
”Of course, it would be too great a sacrifice to make for a prejudiced old man, who has nevertheless always placed the good of Allenwood first, and an inexperienced, sentimental girl!”
Harding flushed at the taunt. It was very hard to displease her, but he would not be justified in giving way, and he thought that later, when she understood better, she would not blame him for being firm. Moreover, his temper was getting short.
”That's neither kind nor fair,” he said. ”Separate or together, your people and I must move on. We can't stand still, blocking the way, and defying Nature and the ordered procession of things. This land was made for the use of man, and he must pay with hard work for all it gives him.”
”I am sorry you take that view; but there seems nothing further to be said.” She rose as she spoke. ”I'm afraid it's impossible that we should agree.”
He left at once, and drove home in a downcast mood. No doubt, he had disappointed her badly. He had not even had the tact to make his refusal graceful; she must think him an iconoclastic boor, driven by a rude hatred of all that she respected. Still, he had tried to be honest; he could not s.h.i.+rk the task he was clearly meant to do. The struggle, however, had tried him hard, and he drove with set lips and knitted brows across the great white waste, oblivious of the biting cold.
CHAPTER X
THE CASTING VOTE
It was a bitter evening. The snow on the crests of the rises glittered like steel; the hollows were sharply picked out in blue. The frost was pitiless, and a strong breeze whipped up clouds of dry snow and drove them in swirls across the plain. A half moon, harshly bright, hung low above the western horizon, and the vast stretch of sky that domed in the prairie was sprinkled with stars.
Harding and Devine were on their way to attend a council meeting at the Grange. Wrapped, as they were, in the thick driving-robe, with their fur caps pulled well down, they could not keep warm. The cold of the icy haze seemed to sear the skin. Harding's woolen-mittened hand was numbed on the reins, and he feared that it was getting frostbitten.
”It's fierce to-night,” Devine remarked. ”Do you think there'll be a good turn-out of the Allenwood boys?”
”The cold won't stop them. I expect the Colonel has sent round to whip them up.”
”I guess you're right. Do you know, now that I've met one or two of them I see something in you and Hester that's in them. Can't tell you what it is, but it's there, and it was plainer in your father. What are they like when you get to know them?”
”Much the same as the rest of us.”
”The rest of us! Then you don't claim to be different from the general prairie crowd?”
Harding frowned.
”I suppose I wouldn't mind being thought the best farmer in the district,” he said; ”but that's all the distinction I care about.”
”You'll get that easy enough. You've gone ahead fast, Craig, and you're going farther; but you may have some trouble on the way. When a man breaks a new trail for himself and leaves other men behind, it doesn't make them fond of him.”
”Oh, I have no delusions on that point. To attain success, one cannot hope to travel a balmy road.”