The Homesteaders: A Novel of the Canadian West

  CHAPTER VI

  IN THE SPELL OF THE MIRAGE

  A quarter of a century is a short time as world history goes, but itis a considerable era in the life of the Canadian West. Morethings--momentous things--than can be hinted at in this narrativeoccurred in the twenty-five years following the great inrush of 1882.The boundless prairie reaches of Manitoba were now comparatively wellsettled, and the tide of immigration, which, after a dozen years'stagnation, had set in again in greater flood than ever, was nowsweeping over the newer lands still farther west. Railways hadsupplanted ox-cart and bob-sleigh as the freighters of the plains;the farmer read his daily paper on the porch after supper, while hissons and daughters drove to town in "top" buggies, tailor-made suits,and patent-leather shoes. The howl of the coyote had given way to thewhistle of the locomotive; beside the sod hut of earlier days rosethe frame or brick house proclaiming prosperity or social ambition.The vast sweep of the horizon, once undefiled by any work of man, waspierced and broken with elevators, villages, and farm buildings, andthe whiff of coal smoke was blown down the air which had so latelyknown only the breath of the prairies. The wild goose no longerloitered in the brown fields in spring and autumn, and the wild duckhad sought the safety of the little lakes. The pioneer days hadpassed away, and civilization and prosperity were rampant in theland. There were those, too, who thought that perhaps the country hadlost something in all its gaining; that perhaps there was lessidealism and less unreckoning hospitality in the brick house on thehill than there once had been in the sod shack In the hollow.

  Mary Harris hurried about her capacious kitchen, deep in thepreparation of the evening meal. The years had taken toll of thefreshness of her young beauty; the shoulders, in mute testimony tomuch hard labour of the hands, had drooped forward over the deepeningchest; the hair was thinner, and farther back above the forehead, andstreaked with grey at the temples; the mouth lacked the rosysensuousness of youth, and sat now in a mould, half of resolution,half submission. Yet her foot had lost little of its sprightliness,and the sympathy in her fine eyes seemed to have deepened with theyears.

  A moist but appetizing steam rose from the vegetable pots on therange, and when she threw back the iron door to feed more coal thehot glow from within danced a reflection along the bright row ofutensils hanging from the wall, and even sought out the brass plateon the cream separator at the far end of the big room. Through thescreen door came the monotonously redundant clic...a...clank of thewindmill, and a keen ear might have caught the light splash of wateras it fell in the wooden horse-troughs from the iron nozzle of thepump.

  Mary stuck a fork in a potato to ascertain if the "bone" was allgone, meanwhile shielding her face from the steam with the pot lid,held aloft in an aproned hand. Having satisfied herself that the mealwas making satisfactory progress, she stepped to the door and sent aquick look across the fields, to where a streak of black smoke wasscrawled along the sky.

  "Beulah," she called, turning toward the interior part of the house."Come, Beulah, set the table. They're coming from the field."

  In a moment a girl of twenty, plainly attired in a neat calico dress,entered the kitchen. She was fresh and beautiful as her mother hadbeen that first summer in the sod house on the bench, and somethingin her appearance suggested that with her mother's beauty and finesensibility she had inherited the indomitable spirit which had madeJohn Harris one of the must prosperous farmers in the district. Shemoved in an easy, unconscious grace of self-reliance--a reliance thatmust be just a little irritating to men of old-fashioned notionsconcerning woman's dependence on the sterner sex--drew the longwooden table, with its covering of white oilcloth, into the centre ofthe kitchen, and began placing the dishes in position.

  "I don't see why we can't have supper in the dining-room," sheprotested at length. "Before we built the new house we were alwaystalking about how fine it would be to have a separate room, for ourmeals, and now we don't eat in it once a week."

  "I know," said the mother, in a quiet, tired voice. "But you knowwhat your father thinks about it. You know how down he is on style."

  "It's no great style to eat in a dining-room," continued the girl."What did he build it for? To take off his boots in? That's about allhe does there, nights before he goes to bed."

  "Now, Beulah, don't be unreasonable. You know we always have mealsthere Sundays. But your father likes the kitchen best when it ain'ttoo hot. And besides, I can hardly take them into the dining-roomwhile the ploughing's on. You know how greasy they are with theengine."

  "They're ploughing over at Grant's, too, and when I dropped in thereyesterday the dinner was set in the dining-room, and a clean whitelinen cloth on the table, and napkins set for the men, and I guessthey use the same kind of grease as we do," persisted the girl. "AndI noticed when they came in to dinner Mr. Grant and the boys, and thehired man too, all put their coats on--not their working coats, butcoats they had hanging in a closet handy. It didn't take a minute,but it looked different."

  "Now, Beulah, you know your father would never stand for putting onairs like that. He--"

  "'Tisn't putting on airs. It's putting on clothes--clean clothes toeat in. Susy Grant never has to feel--I hate to say it,Mother--_ashamed_ if any of her friends drop in at mealtime. And Icouldn't help thinking how fine Harry looked--"

  "'Pon my word, Beulah, I'm beginning to think you must be a bit softon Harry Grant. I had thought perhaps your weakness was toward Jim,but perhaps I'm mistaken."

  "Can't a girl say a fellow's fine-looking without being soft aboutit?" she continued. "As for Jim--"

  But at this moment the conversation was cut short by the scraping ofheavy boots on the ploughshare nailed to the block at the door, andJohn Harris, followed by Allan and the hired man, Jim, walked intothe kitchen. The farmer's frame was heavier than in his younger days,and his hair, too, was streaked with grey, but every muscle in hisgreat body seemed to bulge with strength. His face was brown with theprairie sun and wind of twenty-five summers, and lines of worry andcare had cut their tracings about the mouth and eyes. Beside himstood Allan, his only son, straighter and lither of figure, butalmost equally powerful. The younger man was, indeed, a replica ofthe older, and although they had their disagreements, constantassociation had developed a fine comradeship, and, on the part of theson, a loyalty equal to any strain. The hired man, Jim, was lighterand finer of feature, and his white teeth gleamed against thenut-brown of his face in a quiet smile that refused to be displacedin any emergency, and at times left the beholder in considerabledoubt as to the real emotions working behind.

  The men all wore blue overalls, dark blue or grey shirts, and heavyboots. They were guiltless of coat or vest, and tossed their lightstraw hats on the water-bench as they passed. There was a quicksplashing of greasy hands at the wash-basin, followed by a moreeffectual rubbing on a towel made from a worn-out grain sack. Thehired man paused to change the water and wash his face, but theothers proceeded at once to the table, where no time was lost inceremony. Meat, potatoes, and boiled cabbage were supplied ingenerous quantities on large platters. A fine stack of white breadtiered high on a plate, and a mountainous pile of Mary Harris'sfamous fresh buns towered on another. All hands ate at the tabletogether, although the hired man was usually last to sit down, owingto his perverse insistence upon washing his face and combing his hairbefore each meal. Although his loss of time sometimes irritatedHarris, he bore it in silence. There was no better farm hand in thecountry-side than Jim Travers, and, as Harris often remarked,employers nowadays couldn't afford to be too particular abouttrifles.

  Harris helped himself generously to meat and vegetables and, havingdone so, passed the platters to his son, and in this way they werecirculated about the table. Mary poured the tea from a big granitepot at her elbow, and whenever a shortage of food threatened Beulahrose from her place and refilled plate or platter. There was no talkfor the first few minutes, only the sound of knife and fork pliedvigorously and interchangeably by father and son, and with someregard for conven
tion by the other members of the family. John Harrishad long ago recognized the truth that the destiny of food was themouth, and whether conveyed on knife or fork made little difference.Mary, too, had found a carelessness of little details both of mannerand speech coming over her, as her occasional "ain't" betrayed, butsince Jim had joined their table she had been on her guard. Jimseldom said anything, but always that quiet smile lay like a maskover his real emotions.

  When the first insistent demands of appetite had been appeased,Harris, resting both elbows on the table, with knife and fork trainedon opposite corners of the ceiling, straightened himself somewhat andremarked:

  "Allan an' me's goin' to town to-night; anything you want fromSempter's store, Mary?"

  "That lets me in for the cows," said Beulah. "You were in town nightbefore last, too, and it was half-past nine before I got throughmilking."

  "Oh, well, Jim was away that night," said Allan.

  "Jim has enough to do, without milking cows after hours," returnedthe girl. "What do you want to go to town for again to-night,anyway?"

  "Got to get more coal," said Harris. "We'll take two teams, an' it'llbe late when we get back."

  "Try and not be too late," said the mother, quietly. "You have to beat work so early in the morning, you know."

  "I think it's all nonsense, this day-an'-night work," persistedBeulah. "Is there never going to be any let-up to it?"

  "Beulah, you forget yourself," said her father, "If you'd more to doyou'd have less lime to fret about it. Your mother did more work inone summer than you have in all your life, an' she's doin' more yet."

  "Oh, Beulah's a good help," interposed Mary. "I hope she never has towork like I did."

  "I guess the work never hurt us," said Harris, helping himself topreserved strawberries. "Just the same, I'm glad to see you gettin'it a bit easier. But this younger generation--it beats me what we'recomin' to. Thinkin' about nothin' but fun and gaddin' to town everynight or two. And clo'es--Beulah here's got more clo'es than therewere in the whole Plainville settlement the first two or threeyears."

  "I got more neighbours, too," interjected the girl. Then springingup, she stood behind her father's chair and put her arm around hisneck.

  "Don't be cross, Dad," she whispered. "Your heart's in the rightplace--but a long way in."

  He disengaged her, gently enough. As Beulah said, his heart was allright, but a long way in. Twenty-five years of pitched battle withcircumstances--sometimes in victory, sometimes in defeat, but neverin despair; always with a load of expense about him, always with theproblem of income and outlay to be solved--had made of Harris a manvery different from the young idealist of '82. During the first yearsof struggle for a bare existence in some way the flame of idealismstill burned, but with the dawn of the "better times" there came agradual shifting of standards and a new conception of essentials. Atfirst the settlers attached little value to their land; it was freefor the taking, and excited no envy among them. The crops of theearly years were unprofitable on account of the great distance tomarket; later, when the railway came to their doors, the crops werestill unprofitable, owing to falling prices and diminishing yieldsdue to poor cultivation. Then came a decade during which those whostayed in the country stayed because they could not get out, and itbecame a current saying that the more land a man farmed the deeper hegot in debt. Homesteads were abandoned; settlers flew by night"across the line" or to more distant districts to begin their fightover again. And yet, in some way, Harris kept his idealism amid allthe adversity in which the community was steeped; reverses couldneither crush his spirit nor deflect it from its ambitions.

  Then came the swing of the pendulum. No one knows just what startedit prosperity-wards. Some said it was that the farmers, disheartenedwith wheat-growing, were applying themselves to stock, and certain itis that in "mixed farming" the community eventually found itssalvation; others attributed the change to improved agriculturalimplements, to improved methods of farming, to greater knowledge ofprairie conditions, to reductions in the cost of transportation andenlarged facilities for marketing, or to increasing world demand andhigher world prices for the product of the farm. But whatever thecauses--and no doubt all of the above contributed--the fact graduallydawned upon the settlers that land--their land--was worth money.

  It was the farmers from the United States, scouting for cheaper landsthan were available in their own communities, who first drove theconviction home. They came with money in their wallets; they wereactually prepared to exchange real money for land. Such a thing hadnever before been heard of in Plainville district. At first thesettlers were sceptical. Here were two facts almost beyond the graspof their imagination: that farmers should buy land with money, andthe farmers should have money with which to buy land. True, a few ofthem had already bought railway lands at three or four dollars anacre, but they bought oil long terms, with a trifling investment, andthey aimed to pay for the lands out of the crops or not at all.

  But a few transactions took place; lands were sold at five dollars,six dollars, eight dollars an acre. The farmers began to realize thatland represented wealth--that it was an asset, not a liability--andthere was a rush for the cheap railway lands that had so long gonea-begging. Harris was among the first to sense the change in thetimes, and a beautiful section of railway land that lay next to hishomestead he bought at four dollars an acre. The first crop more thanpaid for the land, and Harris suddenly found himself on the way toriches.

  The joy that came with the realization that fortune had knocked athis door and he had heard was the controlling emotion of his heartfor a year or more. But gradually, like a fog blown across a moonlitnight, came a sense of chill and disappointment. If only he hadbought two sections! If at least he had proved up on his pre-emption,which he might have had for nothing! He saw neighbours about himadding quarter to quarter. None of them had done better than himself,but some had done as well. And in some way the old sense of oneness,the old community interest which had held the little band of pioneerstogether amid their privations and their poverty, began to weaken anddissolve, and in its place came an individualism and a materialismthat measured progress only in dollars and cents. Harris did not knowthat his gods had fallen, that his ideals had been swept away; evenas he sat at supper this summer evening, with his daughter's armsabout his neck, he felt that he was still bravely, persistently,pressing on toward the goal, all unaware that years ago he had leftthat goal like a lighthouse on a rocky shore, and was now sweepingalong with the turbulent tide of Mammonism. He still saw the lightahead, but it was now a phantom of the imagination. He said, "When Iam worth ten thousand I will have reached it"; when he was worth tenthousand he found the faithless light had moved on to twenty-fivethousand. He said, "When I am worth twenty-five thousand I will havereached it"; when he was worth twenty-five thousand he saw the glowstill ahead, beckoning him on to fifty thousand. It never occurred tohim to slacken his pace--to allow his mind a rest from itsconcentration; if he had paused and looked about he might, even yet,have recognized the distant lighthouse on the reef about the wreck ofhis ideals. But to stop now might mean losing sight of his goal, andJohn Harris held nothing in heaven or earth so great as itsattainment.

  So, gently enough, he disengaged his daughter's arms and finished hissupper in silence. As soon as it was ended the men started for thebarn, and in a few minutes two wagons rattled noisily down the trail.

  Beulah helped with the supper dishes, and then came out with themilk-pails to the corral where the cows, puffing and chewing,complacently awaited her arrival. But she had not reached the gatewhen the hired man was at her side and had slipped one of the pailsfrom her arm.

  "Now, Jim, I don't think that's fair at all," she said; and there wasa tremor in her voice that vexed her. "Here you're slaving all daywith coal and water, and I think that's enough, without milking cowsat night."

  But Jim only smiled and stirred a cow into position.

  "Yes, that's like you," she continued. "Pick Daisie first, justbecause you
know she's tough as rubber. Say, Jim, honest goods," shedemanded, pausing and facing him, milk stool in hand, "why do you letfather put this kind of stuff over on you?"

  "Your father doesn't put anything over on me," he answered. "I'm veryfond of milking."

  "Yes, you are--not," she said. "You do it on my account, becauseyou're too big-hearted to quit before I'm through..." There was atuneful song of the tin pails as the white streams rattled on theirbottoms.

  "Jim," she said, after a while, when the noise of the milking wasdrowned in the creamy froth, "I'm getting near the end of this kindof thing. Father's getting more and more set on money all the time.He thinks I should slave along too to pile up more beside what he'sgot already, but I'm not going to do it much longer. Mother standsit--I guess she's got used to him, and she won't say anything, but ifthere's anything I'm not strong on it's silence. I'm not afraid ofwork, or hardship either. I'd live in a sack if I had to. I'd--"

  "Would you live in a shack?" said Jim.

  She shot a quick look at him. But he was quietly smiling into hismilk-pail, and she decided to treat his question impersonally.

  "Yes, I'd live in a shack, too, if I had to. I put in my first yearsin a sod-house, and there was more real happiness romping up and downthe land then than there is now. In those days everybody was so poorthat money didn't count...It's different now."

  Jim did not pursue the subject, and the milking was completed insilence. Jim finished first, and presently the rising hum of thecream separator was heard from the kitchen.

  "There he goes, winding his arm off--for me," said the girl, as sherose from the last cow. "Poor Jim--I wish I knew whether it's justhuman kindness makes him do it, or whether--" She stopped, colouringa little over the thought that had almost escaped into words.

  When the heavy grind of the separating was finished Jim went quietlyto his own room, but the girl put on a clean dress and walked outthrough the garden. Rows of mignonette and lobelia bordered thefootpath, and sweet, earthy garden smells filled the calm eveningair. The rows of currant and gooseberry bushes were heavy with greenfruit; the leaves of the Manitoba maples trembled ever so little inthe still air. The sun was setting, and fleecy fragments of cloudwere painted ruddy gold against the silver background of the sky.From the barnyard came the contented sighing of the cows and theanxious clucking of a hen gathering in her belated brood. The wholecountry seemed bathed in peace--a peace deep and unpurchasable,having no part in any of the affairs of man.

  At the lower gate she stooped to pick a flower, which she held for amoment to her face; then, toying lightly with it in her fingers, sheslipped the latch and continued along the path leading down into theravine. It was dark and cool down there, with a touch of dampness inthe grass, and the balm-of-Gileads across the stream sent a finemoist fragrance through the air. To the right lay the bench where thesod-house had stood, not so much as a mound now marking the spot; butthe thoughts of the girl turned yearningly to it, and to the days ofthe lonely but not unhappy childhood which it had sheltered.

  Presently she reached the water, and her quick ear caught the soundof a musk-rat slipping gently into the stream from the reeds on theopposite bank; she could see the widening wake where he ploughed hisswift way across the pond. Then her own figure stood up before her,graceful and lithe as the willows on the bank. She surveyed it aminute, then flicked the flower at her face in the water, and turnedslowly homeward. She was not unhappy, but a dull sense of lossoppressed her--a sense that the world was very rich and verybeautiful, and that she was feasting neither on its richness nor itsbeauty. There was a stirring of music and poetry in her soul, butneither music nor poetry found expression. What she felt was aconsciousness that great things were just beyond the horizon of herexperience, things undefined and undefinable which, could she butgrasp them, would deepen life and sweeten life and give a purpose toall her being. And as she walked up the path and the fragrant nightair filled her nostrils, something of that wilder life seemed bornein upon her and sent a fresh spring to her ankle. And presently shediscovered she was thinking about Jim Travers.

  Her mother sat in the dining-room, knitting by the light of thehanging lamp. Her face seemed very pale and lovely in the soft glow.

  "Don't you think you have done enough?" said the girl, slipping intoa sitting posture on the floor by her mother's knee. "You work, work,work, all the time. I suppose they'll have to let you work inheaven."

  "We value our work more as we grow older," said the mother..."Ithelps to keep us from thinking."

  "There you go!" exclaimed the girl; but there was a tenderness in hervoice. "Worrying again. I wish they'd stay home for a change."

  The mother plied her needles in silence. "Slip away to bed, Beulah,"she said at length. "I will wait up for a while."

  Late in the night the girl heard heavy footsteps in the kitchen andbursts of loud but indistinct talking.