Part 49 (1/2)
”I wonder,” she said with an amused air, ”why you should make an exception of me?”
”I suppose it lessens my sense of obligation. I feel I've done some little thing to pay you back.”
”I'm not sure that was very happily expressed. Is it painful to feel that you owe anything to your neighbors?”
George flushed.
”That wasn't what I meant. Do you think it's quite fair to lay traps for me, when you can count on my falling into them?” He turned and pointed to the great stretch of grain that clothed the soil with vivid green. ”Look at your work. Last fall, all that plowing was strewn with a wrecked and mangled crop; now it's sown with wheat that will stand the drought. I was feeling nearly desperate, wondering how I was to master the sandy waste, when you came to the rescue and my troubles melted like the dust in summer rain. They couldn't stand before you; you banished them.”
She looked at him rather curiously, and, George thought, with some cause, for he was a little astonished at his outbreak. This was not the kind of language that was most natural to him.
”I wonder,” she said, ”why you should take so much for granted--I mean in holding me accountable?”
”It's obvious,” George declared. ”I understand your father; he's a very generous friend, but the idea of sending me the seed didn't occur to him in the first place; though I haven't the least doubt that he was glad to act on it.”
”Ah!” said Flora, ”it looks as if you had been acquiring some penetration; you were not so explicit the last time you insisted on thanking me. Who can have been teaching you? It seems, however, that I'm still incomprehensible.”
George considered. It would be undesirable to explain that his enlightenment had come from Edgar, and he wanted to express what he felt.
”No,” he said, in answer to her last remark; ”not altogether; but I've sometimes felt that there's a barrier of reserve in you, beyond which it's hard to get.”
”Do you think it would be worth while to make the attempt? Suppose you succeeded and found there was nothing on the other side?”
He made a sign of negation, and she watched him with some interest; the man was trying to thrash out his ideas.
”That couldn't happen,” he declared gravely. ”Somehow you make one feel there is much in you that wants discovery, but that one will learn it by and by. After all, it's only the shallow people you never really get to know.”
”It would seem an easy task, on the face of it.”
”As a matter of fact, it isn't. They have a way of enveloping themselves in an air of importance and mystery, and when they don't do so, they're casual and inconsequent. One likes people with, so to speak, some continuity of character. By degrees one gets to know how they'll act and it gives one a sense of reliance.” He paused and added, diffidently: ”Anything you did would be wise and generous.”
”By degrees?” smiled Flora. ”So it's slowly, by patient sapping, the barriers go down! One could imagine that such things might be violently stormed. But you're not rash, are you, or often in a hurry?
However, it's time I was getting home.”
She waved her hand and rode away, and George, getting into the saddle, started his team, and thought about her while he listened to the crackling of the stubble going down beneath the hoofs, and the soft thud of thrown-back soil as the lengthening rows of clods broke away from the gleaming shares. What she might have meant by her last remark he could not tell, though so far as it concerned him, he was ready to admit that he was addicted to steady plodding. Then his thoughts took a wider range, and he began to make comparisons. Flora was not characterized by Sylvia's fastidious refinement; she was more virile and yet more reposeful. Sylvia's activities spread bustle around her; she required much a.s.sistance and everybody in her neighborhood was usually impressed into her service, though their combined efforts often led to nothing. Flora's work was done silently; the results were most apparent.
Still, the charm Sylvia exerted was always obvious; a thing to rejoice in and be thankful for. Flora had not the same effect on one, though he suspected there was a depth of tenderness in her, behind the barrier. It struck him as a pity that she showed no signs of interest in West, who of late seemed to have been attracted by the pretty daughter of a storekeeper at the settlement; but, after all, the lad was hardly old or serious enough for Flora. There was, however, n.o.body else in the district who was nearly good enough for her; and George felt glad that she was reserved and critical. It would be disagreeable to contemplate her yielding to any suitor unless he were a man of exceptional merit.
Then he laughed and called to his horses. He was thinking about matters that did not concern him; his work was to drive the long furrow for Sylvia's benefit, and he found pleasure in it. Bright suns.h.i.+ne smote the burnished clods; scattered, white-edged clouds drove across the sky of dazzling blue, flinging down cool gray shadows that sped athwart the stubble; young wheat, wavy lines of bluff, and wide-spread prairie were steeped in glowing color. The man rejoiced in the rush of the breeze; the play of straining muscles swelling and sinking on the bodies of the team before him was pleasant to watch; he felt at home in the sun and wind, which, tempered as they often were by gentle rain, were staunchly a.s.sisting him. By and by, all the foreground of the picture he gazed upon would be covered with the coppery ears of wheat.
He had once shrunk from returning to Canada; but now, through all the stress of cold and heat, he was growing fond of the new land. What was more, he felt the power to work at such a task as he was now engaged in to be a privilege.
CHAPTER XXVII
A SIGN FROM FLETT
Summer drew on with swift strides. Crimson flowers flecked the prairie gra.s.s, the wild barley waved its bristling ears along the trails, saskatoons glowed red in the shadows of each bluff. Day by day swift-moving clouds cast flitting shadows across the sun-scorched plain, but though they shed no moisture the wheat stood nearly waist-high upon the Marston farm. The sand that whirled about it did the strong stalks no harm.
Earlier in the season there had been drenching thunder showers, and beyond the grain the flax spread in sheets of delicate blue that broke off on the verge of the brown-headed timothy. Still farther back lay the green of alsike and alfalfa, for the band of red and white cattle that roamed about the bluffs; but while the fodder crop was bountiful George had decided to supplement it with the natural prairie hay.
There was no pause in his exertions; task followed task in swift succession. Rising in the sharp cold of the dawn, he toiled a.s.siduously until the sunset splendors died out in paling green and crimson on the far rim of the plain.