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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/28514-8.txt b/28514-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a493f1d --- /dev/null +++ b/28514-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8388 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prairie Child, by Arthur Stringer + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Prairie Child + +Author: Arthur Stringer + +Illustrator: E. F. Ward + +Release Date: April 6, 2009 [EBook #28514] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRAIRIE CHILD *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: We gathered wood and made a fire] + + + + +THE PRAIRIE CHILD + +By ARTHUR STRINGER + +Author of + +"Are All Men Alike and the Lost Titian," "The Prairie Mother," +"The Prairie Wife," "The Wine of Life," "The Door of Dread," +"The Man Who Couldn't Sleep," etc. + +[Illustration] + +With Frontispiece by + +E. F. WARD + +A. L. BURT COMPANY + +Publishers New York + +Published by arrangement with The Bobbs-Merrill Company + +Printed in U. S. A. + + + + +Copyright 1922 + +The Pictorial Review Company + +Copyright 1922 + +The Bobbs-Merrill Company + +Printed in the United States of America + + + + +THE PRAIRIE CHILD + + + + +_Friday the Eighth of March_ + + +"But the thing I can't understand, Dinky-Dunk, is how you ever +_could_." + +"Could what?" my husband asked in an aerated tone of voice. + +I had to gulp before I got it out. + +"Could kiss a woman like that," I managed to explain. + +Duncan Argyll McKail looked at me with a much cooler eye than I had +expected. If he saw my shudder, he paid no attention to it. + +"On much the same principle," he quietly announced, "that the Chinese +eat birds' nests." + +"Just what do you mean by that?" I demanded, resenting the fact that +he could stand as silent as a December beehive before my morosely +questioning eyes. + +"I mean that, being married, you've run away with the idea that all +birds' nests are made out of mud and straw, with possibly a garnish +of horse hairs. But if you'd really examine these edible nests you'd +find they were made of surprisingly appealing and succulent tendrils. +They're quite appetizing, you may be sure, or they'd never be eaten!" + +I stood turning this over, exactly as I've seen my Dinkie turn over an +unexpectedly rancid nut. + +"Aren't you, under the circumstances, being rather stupidly clever?" I +finally asked. + +"When I suppose you'd rather see me cleverly stupid?" he found the +heart to suggest. + +"But that woman, to me, always looked like a frog," I protested, doing +my best to duplicate his pose of impersonality. + +"Well, she doesn't make love like a frog," he retorted with his first +betraying touch of anger. I turned to the window, to the end that my +Eliza-Crossing-the-Ice look wouldn't be entirely at his mercy. A +belated March blizzard was slapping at the panes and cuffing the +house-corners. At the end of a long winter, I knew, tempers were apt +to be short. But this was much more than a matter of barometers. The +man I'd wanted to live with like a second "Suzanne de Sirmont" in +Daudet's _Happiness_ had not only cut me to the quick but was rubbing +salt in the wound. He had said what he did with deliberate intent to +hurt me, for it was only too obvious that he was tired of being on the +defensive. And it did hurt. It couldn't help hurting. For the man, +after all, was my husband. He was the husband to whom I'd given up the +best part of my life, the two-legged basket into which I'd packed all +my eggs of allegiance. And now he was scrambling that precious +collection for a cheap omelette of amorous adventure. He was my +husband, I kept reminding myself. But that didn't cover the entire +case. No husband whose heart is right stands holding another woman's +shoulder and tries to read her shoe-numbers through her ardently +upturned eyes. It shows the wind is not blowing right in the home +circle. It shows a rent in the dyke, a flaw in the blade, a breach in +the fortress-wall of faith. For marriage, to the wife who is a mother +as well, impresses me as rather like the spliced arrow of the +Esquimos: it is cemented together with blood. It is a solemn matter. +And for the sake of _mutter-schutz_, if for nothing else, it must be +kept that way. + +There was a time, I suppose, when the thought of such a thing would +have taken my breath away, would have chilled me to the bone. But I'd +been through my refining fires, in that respect, and you can't burn +the prairie over twice in the same season. I tried to tell myself it +was the setting, and not the essential fact, that seemed so odious. I +did my best to believe it wasn't so much that Duncan Argyll McKail had +stooped to make advances to this bandy-legged she-teacher whom I'd so +charitably housed at Casa Grande since the beginning of the year--for +I'd long since learned not to swallow the antique claim that of all +terrestrial _carnivora_ only man and the lion are truly +monogamous--but more the fact it had been made such a back-stairs +affair with no solitary redeeming touch of dignity. + +Dinky-Dunk, I suppose, would have laughed it away, if I hadn't walked +in on them with their arms about each other, and the bandy-legged one +breathing her capitulating sighs into his ear. But there was +desperation in the eyes of Miss Alsina Teeswater, and it was plain to +see that if my husband had been merely playing with fire it had become +a much more serious matter with the lady in the case. There was, in +fact, something almost dignifying in that strickenly defiant face of +hers. I was almost sorry for her when she turned and walked +white-lipped out of the room. What I resented most, as I stood facing +my husband, was his paraded casualness, his refusal to take a tragic +situation tragically. His attitude seemed to imply that we were about +to have a difference over a small thing--over a small thing with brown +eyes. He could even stand inspecting me with a mildly amused glance, +and I might have forgiven his mildness, I suppose, if it had been +without amusement, and that amusement in some way at my expense. He +even managed to laugh as I stood there staring at him. It was neither +an honest nor a natural laugh. It merely gave me the feeling that he +was trying to entrench himself behind a raw mound of mirth, that any +shelter was welcome until the barrage was lifted. + +"And what do you intend doing about it?" I asked, more quietly than I +had imagined possible. + +"What would you suggest?" he parried, as he began to feel in his +pockets for his pipe. + +And I still had a sense, as I saw the barricaded look come into his +face, of entrenchments being frantically thrown up. I continued to +stare at him as he found his pipe and proceeded to fill it. I even +wrung a ghostly satisfaction out of the discovery that his fingers +weren't so steady as he might have wished them to be. + +"I suppose you're trying to make me feel like the Wicked Uncle edging +away from the abandoned Babes in the Woods?" he finally demanded, as +though exasperated by my silence. He was delving for matches by this +time, and seemed disappointed that none was to be found in his +pockets. I don't know why he should seem to recede from me, for he +didn't move an inch from where he stood with that defensively mocking +smile on his face. But abysmal gulfs of space seemed to blow in like +sea-mists between him and me, desolating and lonely stretches of +emptiness which could never again be spanned by the tiny bridges of +hope. I felt alone, terribly alone, in a world over which the last +fire had swept and the last rains had fallen. My throat tightened and +my eyes smarted from the wave of self-pity which washed through my +body. It angered me, ridiculously, to think that I was going to break +down at such a time. + +But the more I thought over it the more muddled I grew. There was +something maddening in the memory that I was unable to act as my +instincts prompted me to act, that I couldn't, like the outraged wife +of screen and story, walk promptly out of the door and slam it +epochally shut after me. But modern life never quite lives up to its +fiction. And we are never quite free, we women who have given our +hostages to fortune, to do as we wish. We have lives other than our +own to think about. + +"But it's all been so--so _dishonest_!" I cried out, stopping myself +in the middle of a gesture which might have seemed like wringing my +hands. + +That, apparently, gave Dinky-Dunk something to get his teeth into. The +neutral look went out of his eye, to be replaced by a fortifying stare +of enmity. + +"I don't know as it's any more dishonest than the long-distance brand +of the same thing!" + +I knew, at once, what he meant. He meant Peter. He meant poor old +Peter Ketley, whose weekly letter, year in and year out, came as +regular as clockwork to Casa Grande. Those letters came to my son +Dinkie, though it couldn't be denied they carried many a cheering word +and many a companionable message to Dinkie's mother. But it brought me +up short, to think that my own husband would try to play cuttle-fish +with a clean-hearted and a clean-handed man like Peter. The wave that +went through my body, on this occasion, was one of rage. I tried to +say something, but I couldn't. The lion of my anger had me down, by +this time, with his paw on my breast. The power of speech was +squeezed out of my carcass. I could only stare at my husband with a +denuding and devastating stare of incredulity touched with disgust, of +abhorrence skirting dangerously close along the margins of hate. And +he stared back, with morose and watchful defiance on his face. + +Heaven only knows how it would have ended, if that tableau hadn't gone +smash, with a sudden offstage clatter and thump and cry which reminded +me there were more people in the world than Chaddie McKail and her +philandering old husband. For during that interregnum of parental +preoccupation Dinkie and Poppsy had essayed to toboggan down the lower +half of the front-stairs in an empty drawer commandeered from my +bedroom dresser. Their descent, apparently, had been about as +precipitate as that of their equally adventurous sire down the treads +of my respect, for they had landed in a heap on the hardwood floor of +the hall and I found Dinkie with an abraded shin-bone and Poppsy with +a cut lip. My Poppsy was more frightened at the sight of blood than +actually hurt by her fall, and Dinkie betrayed a not unnatural +tendency to enlarge on his injuries in extenuation of his offense. But +that suddenly imposed demand for first-aid took my mind out of the +darker waters in which it had been wallowing, and by the time I had +comforted my kiddies and completed my ministrations Dinky-Dunk had +quietly escaped from the house and my accusatory stares by clapping on +his hat and going out to the stables.... + +And that's the scene which keeps pacing back and forth between the +bars of my brain like a jaguar in a circus-cage. That's the scene I've +been living over, for the last few days, thinking of all the more +brilliant things I might have said and the more expedient things I +might have done. And that's the scene which has been working like +yeast at the bottom of my sodden batter of contentment, making me feel +that I'd swell up and burst, if all that crazy ferment couldn't find +some relief in expression. So after three long years and more of +silence I'm turning back to this, the journal of one irresponsible old +Chaddie McKail, who wanted so much to be happy and who has in some way +missed the pot of gold that they told her was to be found at the +rainbow's end. + +It seems incredible, as I look back, that more than three, long years +should slip away without the penning of one line in this, the +safety-valve of my soul. But the impulse to write rather slipped away +from me. It wasn't that there was so little to record, for life is +always life. But when it burns clearest it seems to have the trick of +consuming its own smoke and leaving so very little ash. The crowded +even tenor of existence goes on, with its tidal ups and downs, too +listlessly busy to demand expression. Then the shock of tempest comes, +and it's only after we're driven out of them that we realize we've +been drifting so long in the doldrums of life. Then it comes home to +us that there are the Dark Ages in the history of a woman exactly as +there were the Dark Ages in the history of Europe. Life goes on in +those Dark Ages, but it doesn't feel the call to articulate itself, to +leave a record of its experiences. And that strikes me, as I sit here +and think of it, as about the deepest tragedy that can overtake +anything on this earth. Nothing, after all, is sadder than silence, +the silence of dead civilizations and dead cities and dead souls. And +nothing is more costly. For beauty itself, in actual life, passes +away, but beauty lovingly recorded by mortal hands endures and goes +down to our children. And I stop writing, at that word of "children," +for miraculously, as I repeat it, I see it cut a window in the +unlighted house of my heart. And that window is the bright little +Gothic oriel which will always be golden and luminous with love and +will always send the last shadow scurrying away from the mustiest +corner of my tower of life. I have my Dinkie and my Poppsy, and +nothing can take them away from me. It's on them that I pin my hope. + + + + +_Sunday the Seventeenth_ + + +I've been thinking a great deal over what's happened this last week or +so. And I've been trying to reorganize my life, the same as you put a +house to rights after a funeral. But it wasn't a well-ordered funeral, +in this case, and I was denied even the tempered satisfaction of the +bereaved after the finality of a smoothly conducted burial. For +nothing has been settled. It's merely that Time has been trying to +encyst what it can not absorb. I felt, for a day or two, that I had +nothing much to live for. I felt like a feather-weight who'd faced a +knock-out. I saw Pride go to the mat, and take the count, and if I was +dazed, for a while, I suppose it was mostly convalescence from shock. +Then I tightened my belt, and reminded myself that it wasn't the first +wallop Fate had given me, and remembered that in this life you have to +adjust yourself to your environment or be eliminated from the game. +And life, I suppose, has tamed me, as a man who once loved me said it +would do. The older I get the more tolerant I try to be, and the more +I know of this world the more I realize that Right is seldom all on +one side and Wrong on the other. It's a matter of give and take, this +problem of traveling in double-harness. I can even smile a little, as +I remember that college day in my teens when Matilda-Anne and Katrina +and Fanny-Rain-in-the-Face and myself solemnly discussed man and his +make-up, over a three-pound box of Maillard's, and resolutely agreed +that we would surrender our hearts to no suitor over twenty-six and +marry no male who'd ever loved another woman--not, at least, unless +the situation had become compensatingly romanticized by the death of +any such lady preceding us in our loved one's favor. Little we knew of +men and ourselves and the humiliations with which life breaks the +spirit of arrogant youth! For even now, knowing what I know, I've been +doing my best to cooper together a case for my unstable old +Dinky-Dunk. I've been trying to keep the thought of poor dead Lady +Alicia out of my head. I've been wondering if there's any truth in +what Dinky-Dunk said, a few weeks ago, about a mere father being like +the male of the warrior-spider whom the female of the species stands +ready to dine upon, once she's assured of her progeny. + +I suppose I _have_ given most of my time and attention to my children. +And it's as perilous, I suppose, to give your heart to a man and then +take it even partly away again as it is to give a trellis to a +rose-bush and then expect it to stand alone. My husband, too, has been +restless and dissatisfied with prairie life during the last year or +so, has been rocking in his own doldrums of inertia where the sight of +even the humblest ship--and the Wandering Sail in this case always +seemed to me as soft and shapeless as a boned squab-pigeon!--could +promptly elicit an answering signal. + +But I strike a snag there, for Alsina has not been so boneless as I +anticipated. There was an unlooked-for intensity in her eyes and a +mild sort of tragedy in her voice when she came and told me that she +was going to another school in the Knee-Hill country and asked if I +could have her taken in to Buckhorn the next morning. Some one, of +course, had to go. There was one too many in this prairie home that +must always remain so like an island dotting the lonely wastes of a +lonely sea. And triangles, oddly enough, seem to flourish best in city +squares. But much as I wanted to talk to Alsina, I was compelled to +respect her reserve. I even told her that Dinkie would miss her a +great deal. She replied, with a choke in her voice, that he was a +wonderful child. That, of course, was music to the ears of his mother, +and my respect for the tremulous Miss Teeswater went up at least ten +degrees. But when she added, without meeting my eye, that she was +really fond of the boy, I couldn't escape the impression that she was +edging out on very thin ice. It was, I think, only the silent misery +in her half-averted face which kept me from inquiring if she hadn't +rather made it a family affair. But that, second thought promptly told +me, would seem too much like striking the fallen. And we both seemed +to feel, thereafter, that silence was best. + +Practically nothing passed between us, in fact, until we reached the +station. I could see that she was dreading the ordeal of saying +good-by. That unnamed sixth sense peculiar to cab-drivers and waiters +and married women told me that every moment on the bald little +platform was being a torture to her. As the big engine came lumbering +up to a standstill she gave me one quick and searching look. It was a +look I shall never forget. For, in it was a question and something +more than a question. An unworded appeal was there, and also an +unworded protest. It got past my outposts of reason, in some way. It +came to me in my bitterness like the smell of lilacs into a sick-room. +I couldn't be cruel to that poor crushed outcast who had suffered +quite as much from the whole ignoble affair as I had suffered. I +suddenly held out my hand to her, and she took it, with that hungry +questioning look still on her face. + +"It's all right," I started to say. But her head suddenly went down +between her hunched-up shoulders. Her body began to shake and tears +gushed from her eyes. I had to help her to the car steps. + +"It was all my fault," she said in a strangled voice, between her +helpless little sobs. + +It was brave of her, of course, and she meant it for the best. But I +wish she hadn't said it. Instead of making everything easier for me, +as she intended, she only made it harder. She left me disturbingly +conscious of ghostly heroisms which transposed what I had tried to +regard as essentially ignoble into some higher and purer key. And she +made it harder for me to look at my husband, when I got home, with a +calm and collected eye. I felt suspiciously like Lady Macbeth after +the second murder. I felt that we were fellow-sharers of a guilty +secret it would never do to drag too often into the light of +every-day life. + +But it will no more stay under cover, I find, than a dab-chick will +stay under water. It bobs up in the most unexpected places, as it did +last night, when Dinkie publicly proclaimed that he was going to marry +his Mummy when he got big. + +"It would be well, my son, not to repeat the mistakes of your father!" +observed Dinky-Dunk. And having said it, he relighted his quarantining +pipe and refused to meet my eye. But it didn't take a surgical +operation to get what he meant into my head. It hurt, in more ways +than one, for it struck me as suspiciously like a stone embodied in a +snowball--and even our offspring recognized this as no fair manner of +fighting. + +"Then it impresses you as a mistake?" I demanded, seeing red, for the +coyote in me, I'm afraid, will never entirely become house-dog. + +"Isn't that the way you regard it?" he asked, inspecting me with a +non-committal eye. + +I had to bite my lip, to keep from flinging out at him the things that +were huddled back in my heart. But it was no time for making big war +medicine. So I got the lid on, and held it there. + +"My dear Dinky-Dunk," I said with an effort at a gesture of weariness, +"I've long since learned that life can't be made clean, like a cat's +body, by the use of the tongue alone!" + +Dinky-Dunk did not look at me. Instead, he turned to the boy who was +watching that scene with a small frown of perplexity on his none too +approving face. + +"You go up to the nursery," commanded my husband, with more curtness +than usual. + +But before Dinkie went he slowly crossed the room and kissed me. He +did so with a quiet resoluteness which was not without its tacit touch +of challenge. + +"You may feel that way about the use of the tongue," said my husband +as soon as we were alone, "but I'm going to unload a few things I've +been keeping under cover." + +He waited for me to say something. But I preferred remaining silent. + +"Of course," he floundered on, "I don't want to stop you martyrizing +yourself in making a mountain out of a mole-hill. But I'm getting a +trifle tired of this holier-than-thou attitude. And----" + +"And?" I prompted, when he came to a stop and sat pushing up his +brindled front-hair until it made me think of the Corean lion on the +library mantel, the lion in pottery which we invariably spoke of as +the Dog of Fo. My wintry smile at that resemblance seemed to +exasperate him. + +"What were you going to say?" I quietly inquired. + +"Oh, hell!" he exclaimed, with quite unexpected vigor. + +"I hope the children are out of hearing," I reminded him, +solemn-eyed. + +"Yes, the children!" he cried, catching at the word exactly as a +drowning man catches at a lifebelt. "The children! That's just the +root of the whole intolerable situation. This hasn't been a home for +the last three or four years; it's been nothing but a nursery. And +about all I've been is a retriever for a _crèche_, a clod-hopper to +tiptoe about the sacred circle and see to it there's enough flannel to +cover their backs and enough food to put into their stomachs. I'm an +accident, of course, an intruder to be faced with fortitude and borne +with patience." + +"This sounds quite disturbing," I interrupted. "It almost leaves me +suspicious that you are about to emulate the rabbit and devour your +young." + +Dinky-Dunk fixed me with an accusatory finger. + +"And the fact that you can get humor out of it shows me just how far +it has gone," he cried with a bitterness which quickly enough made me +sober again. "And I could stand being deliberately shut out of your +life, and shut out of their lives as far as you can manage it, but I +can't see that it's doing either them or you any particular good." + +"But I am responsible for the way in which those children grow up," I +said, quite innocent of the _double entendre_ which brought a dark +flush to my husband's none too happy face. + +"And I suppose I'm not to contaminate them?" he demanded. + +"Haven't you done enough along that line?" I asked. + +He swung about, at that, with something dangerously like hate on his +face. + +"Whose children are they?" he challenged. + +"You are their father," I quietly acknowledged. It rather startled me +to find Dinky-Dunk regarding himself as a fur coat and my offspring as +moth-eggs which I had laid deep in the pelt of his life, where we were +slowly but surely eating the glory out of that garment and leaving it +as bald as a prairie dog's belly. + +"Well, you give very little evidence of it!" + +"You can't expect me to turn a cart-wheel, surely, every time I +remember it?" was my none too gracious inquiry. Then I sat down. "But +what is it you want me to do?" I asked, as I sat studying his face, +and I felt sorriest for him because he felt sorry for himself. + +"That's exactly the point," he averred. "There doesn't seem anything +to do. But this can't go on forever." + +"No," I acknowledged. "It seems too much like history repeating +itself." + +His head went down, at that, and it was quite a long time before he +looked up at me again. + +"I don't suppose you can see it from my side of the fence?" he asked +with a disturbing new note of humility in his voice. + +"Not when you force me to stay on the fence," I told him. He seemed to +realize, as he sat there slowly moving his head up and down, that no +further advance was to be made along that line. So he took a deep +breath and sat up. + +"Something will have to be done about getting a new teacher for that +school," he said with an appositeness which was only too painfully +apparent. + +"I've already spoken to two of the trustees," I told him. "They're +getting a teacher from the Peg. It's to be a man this time." + +Instead of meeting my eye, he merely remarked: "That'll be better for +the boy!" + +"In what way?" I inquired. + +"Because I don't think too much petticoat is good for any boy," +responded my lord and master. + +"Big or little!" I couldn't help amending, in spite of all my good +intentions. + +Dinky-Dunk ignored the thrust, though it plainly took an effort. + +"There are times when even kindness can be a sort of cruelty," he +patiently and somewhat platitudinously pursued. + +"Then I wish somebody would ill-treat me along that line," I +interjected. And this time he smiled, though it was only for a +moment. + +"Supposing we stick to the children," he suggested. + +"Of course," I agreed. "And since you've brought the matter up I can't +help telling you that I always felt that my love for my children is +the one redeeming thing in my life." + +"Thanks," said my husband, with a wince. + +"Please don't misunderstand me. I'm merely trying to say that a +mother's love for her children has to be one of the strongest and +holiest things in this hard old world of ours. And it seems only +natural to me that a woman should consider her children first, and +plan for them, and make sacrifices for them, and fight for them if she +has to." + +"It's so natural, in fact," remarked Dinky-Dunk, "that it has been +observed in even the Bengal tigress." + +"It is my turn to thank you," I acknowledged, after giving his +statement a moment or two of thought. + +"But we're getting away from the point again," proclaimed my husband. +"I've been trying to tell you that children are like rabbits: It's +only fit and proper they should be cared for, but they can't thrive, +and they can't even live, if they're handled too much." + +"I haven't observed any alarming absence of health in my children," I +found the courage to say. But a tightness gathered about my heart, for +I could sniff what was coming. + +"They may be all right, as far as that goes," persisted their lordly +parent. "But what I say is, too much cuddling and mollycoddling isn't +good for that boy of yours, or anybody else's boy." And he proceeded +to explain that my Dinkie was an ordinary, every-day, normal child +and should be accepted and treated as such or we'd have a +temperamental little bounder on our hands. + +I knew that my boy wasn't abnormal. But I knew, on the other hand, +that he was an exceptionally impressionable and sensitive child. And I +couldn't be sorry for that, for if there's anything I abhor in this +world it's torpor. And whatever he may have been, nothing could shake +me in my firm conviction that a child's own mother is the best person +to watch over his growth and shape his character. + +"But what is all this leading up to?" I asked, steeling myself for the +unwelcome. + +"Simply to what I've already told you on several occasions," was my +husband's answer. "That it's about time this boy of ours was bundled +off to a boarding-school." + +I sat back, trying to picture my home and my life without Dinkie. But +it was unbearable. It was unthinkable. + +"I shall never agree to that," I quietly retorted. + +"Why?" asked my husband, with a note of triumph which I resented. + +"For one thing, because he is still a child, because he is too young," +I contended, knowing that I could never agree with Dinky-Dunk in his +thoroughly English ideas of education even while I remembered how he +had once said that the greatness of England depended on her +public-schools, such as Harrow and Eton and Rugby and Winchester, and +that she had been the best colonizer in the world because her boys had +been taken young and taught not to overvalue home ties, had been made +manlier by getting off with their own kind instead of remaining +hitched to an apron-string. + +"And you prefer keeping him stuck out here on the prairie?" demanded +Dinky-Dunk. + +"The prairie has been good enough for his parents, this last seven or +eight years," I contended. + +"It hasn't been good enough for me," my husband cried out with quite +unlooked-for passion. "And I've about had my fill of it!" + +"Where would you prefer going?" I asked, trying to speak as quietly as +I could. + +"That's something I'm going to find out as soon as the chance comes," +he retorted with a slow and embittered emphasis which didn't add any +to my peace of mind. + +"Then why cross our bridges," I suggested, "until we come to them?" + +"But you're not looking for bridges," he challenged. "You don't want +to see anything beyond living like Doukhobours out here on the edge of +Nowhere and remembering that you've got your precious offspring here +under your wing and wondering how many bushels of Number-One-Hard it +will take to buy your Dinkie a riding pinto!" + +"Aren't you rather tired to-night?" I asked with all the patience I +could command. + +"Yes, and I'm talking about the thing that makes me tired. For you +know as well as I do that you've made that boy of yours a sort of +anesthetic. You put him on like a nose-cap, and forget the world. He's +about all you remember to think about. Why, when you look at the +clock, nowadays, it isn't ten minutes to twelve. It's always Dinkie +minutes to Dink. When you read a book you're only reading about what +your Dinkie might have done or what your Dinkie is some day to write. +When you picture the Prime Minister it's merely your Dinkie grown big, +laying down the law to a House of Parliament made up of other Dinkies, +rows and rows of 'em. When the sun shines you're wondering whether +it's warm enough for your Dinkie to walk in, and when the snow begins +to melt you're wondering whether it's soft enough for the beloved +Dinkie to mold into snowballs. When you see a girl you at once get +busy speculating over whether or not she'll ever be beautiful enough +for your Dinkie, and when one of the Crowned Heads of Europe announces +the alliance of its youngest princess you fall to pondering if Dinkie +wouldn't have made her a better husband. And when the flowers come out +in your window-box you wonder if they're fair enough to bloom beside +your Dinkie. I don't suppose I ever made a haystack that you didn't +wonder whether it wasn't going to be a grand place for Dinkie to slide +down. And when Dinkie draws a goggle-eyed man on his scribbler you see +Michael Angelo totter and Titian turn in his grave. And when Dinkie +writes a composition of thirty crooked lines on the landing of Hengist +you feel that fate did Hume a mean trick in letting him pass away +before inspecting that final word in historical record. And heaven's +just a row of Dinkies with little gold harps tucked under their wings. +And you think you're breathing air, but all you're breathing is +Dinkies, millions and millions of etherealized Dinkies. And when you +read about the famine in China you inevitably and adroitly hitch the +death of seven thousand Chinks in Yangchow on to the interests of +your immortal offspring. And I suppose Rome really came into being for +the one ultimate end that an immortal young Dinkie might possess his +full degree of Dinkiness and the glory that was Greece must have been +merely the tom-toms tuning up for the finished dance of our Dinkie's +grandeur. Day and night, it's Dinkie, just Dinkie!" + +I waited until he was through. I waited, heavy of heart, until his +foolish fires of revolt had burned themselves out. And it didn't seem +to add to his satisfaction to find that I could inspect him with a +quiet and slightly commiserative eye. + +"You are accusing me," I finally told him, "of something I'm proud of. +And I'm afraid I'll always be guilty of caring for my own son." + +He turned on me with a sort of heavy triumph. + +"Well, it's something that you'll jolly well pay the piper for, some +day," he announced. + +"What do you mean by that?" I demanded. + +"I mean that nothing much is ever gained by letting the maternal +instinct run over. And that's exactly what you're doing. You're trying +to tie Dinkie to your side, when you can no more tie him up than you +can tie up a sunbeam. You could keep him close enough to you, of +course, when he was small. But he's bound to grow away from you as he +gets bigger, just as I grew away from my mother and you once grew away +from yours. It's a natural law, and there's no use crocking your knees +on it. The boy's got his own life to live, and you can't live it for +him. It won't be long, now, before you begin to notice those quiet +withdrawals, those slippings-back into his own shell of self-interest. +And unless you realize what it means, it's going to hurt. And unless +you reckon on that in the way you order your life you're not only +going to be a very lonely old lady but you're going to bump into a big +hole where you thought the going was smoothest!" + +I sat thinking this over, with a ton of lead where my heart should +have been. + +"I've already bumped into a big hole where I thought the going was +smoothest," I finally observed. + +My husband looked at me and then looked away again. + +"I was hoping we could fill that up and forget it," he ventured in a +valorously timid tone which made it hard, for reasons I couldn't quite +fathom, to keep my throat from tightening. But I sat there, shaking my +head from side to side. + +"I've got to love something," I found myself protesting. "And the +children seem all that is left." + +"How about me?" asked my husband, with his acidulated and slightly +one-sided smile. + +"You've changed, Dinky-Dunk," was all I could say. + +"But some day," he contended, "you may wake up to the fact that I'm +still a human being." + +"I've wakened up to the fact that you're a different sort of human +being than I had thought." + +"Oh, we're all very much alike, once you get our number," asserted my +husband. + +"You mean men are," I amended. + +"I mean that if men can't get a little warmth and color and sympathy +in the home-circle they're going to edge about until they find a +substitute for it, no matter how shoddy it may be," contended +Dinky-Dunk. + +"But isn't that a hard and bitter way of writing life down to one's +own level?" I asked, trying to swallow the choke that wouldn't stay +down in my throat. + +"Well, I can't see that we get much ahead by trying to sentimentalize +the situation," he said, with a gesture that seemed one of +frustration. + +We sat staring at each other, and again I had the feeling of abysmal +gulfs of space intervening between us. + +"Is that all you can say about it?" I asked, with a foolish little +gulp I couldn't control. + +"Isn't it enough?" demanded Dinky-Dunk. And I knew that nothing was to +be gained, that night, by the foolish and futile clash of words. + + + + +_Tuesday the Twenty-Third_ + + +I've been doing a good deal of thinking over what Dinky-Dunk said. I +have been trying to see things from his standpoint. By a sort of +mental ju-jutsu I've even been trying to justify what I can't quite +understand in him. But it's no use. There's one bald, hard fact I +can't escape, no matter how I dig my old ostrich-beak of instinct +under the sands of self-deception. There's one cold-blooded truth that +will have to be faced. _My husband is no longer in love with me._ +Whatever else may have happened, I have lost my heart-hold on Duncan +Argyll McKail. I am still his wife, in the eyes of the law, and the +mother of his children. We still live together, and, from force of +habit, if from nothing else, go through the familiar old rites of +daily communion. He sits across the table from me when I eat, and +talks casually enough of the trivially momentous problems of the +minute, or he reads in his slippers before the fire while I do my +sewing within a spool-toss of him. But a row of invisible assegais +stand leveled between his heart and mine. A slow glacier of +green-iced indifferency shoulders in between us; and gone forever is +the wild-flower aroma of youth, the singing spirit of April, the +mysterious light that touched our world with wonder. He is merely a +man, drawing on to middle age, and I am a woman, no longer young. Gone +now are the spring floods that once swept us together. Gone now is the +flame of adoration that burned clean our altar of daily intercourse +and left us blind to the weaknesses we were too happy to remember. For +there was a time when we loved each other. I know that as well as +Duncan does. But it died away, that ghostly flame. It went out like a +neglected fire. And blowing on dead ashes can never revive the +old-time glow. + +"So they were married and lived happy ever afterward!" That is the +familiar ending to the fairy-tales I read over and over again to my +Dinkie and Poppsy. But they are fairy-tales. For who lives happy ever +afterward? First love chloroforms us, for a time, and we try to hug to +our bosoms the illusion that Heaven itself is only a sort of endless +honeymoon presided over by Lohengrin marches. But the anesthetic wears +away and we find that life isn't a bed of roses but a rough field that +rewards us as we till it, with here and there the cornflower of +happiness laughing unexpectedly up at us out of our sober acres of +sober wheat. And often enough we don't know happiness when we see it. +We assuredly find it least where we look for it most. I can't even +understand why we're equipped with such a hunger for it. But I find +myself trending more and more to that cynic philosophy which defines +happiness as the absence of pain. The absence of pain--that is a lot +to ask for, in this life! + +I wonder if Dinky-Dunk is right in his implication that I am getting +hard? There are times, I know, when I grate on him, when he would +probably give anything to get away from me. Yet here we are, linked +together like two convicts. And I don't believe I'm as hard as my +husband accuses me of being. However macadamized they may have made +life for me, there's at least one soft spot in my heart, one garden +under the walls of granite. And that's the spot which my two children +fill, which my children keep green, which my children keep holy. It's +them I think of, when I think of the future--when I should at least be +thinking a little of my grammar and remembering that the verb "to be" +takes the nominative, just as discontented husbands seem to take the +initiative! That's why I can't quite find the courage to ask for +freedom. I have seen enough of life to know what the smash-up of a +family means to its toddlers. And I want my children to have a chance. +They can't have that chance without at least two things. One is the +guardianship of home life, and the other is that curse of modern times +known as money. We haven't prospered as we had hoped to, but heaven +knows I've kept an eagle eye on that savings-account of mine, in that +absurdly new and resplendent red-brick bank in Buckhorn. Patiently +I've fed it with my butter and egg money, joyfully I've seen it grow +with my meager Nitrate dividends, and grimly I've made it bigger with +every loose dollar I could lay my hands on. There's no heroism in my +going without things I may have thought I needed, just as there can be +little nobility in my sticking to a husband who no longer loves me. +For it's not Chaddie McKail who counts now, but her chicks. And I'll +have to look for my reward through them, for I'm like Romanes' rat +now, too big to get into the bottle of cream, but wary enough to know +I can dine from a tail still small enough for insertion. I'm merely a +submerged prairie-hen with the best part of her life behind her. + +But it bothers me, what Duncan says about my always thinking of little +Dinkie first. And I'm afraid I do, though it seems neither right nor +fair. I suppose it's because he was my first-born--and having come +first in my life he must come first in my thoughts. I was made to love +somebody--and my husband doesn't seem to want me to love him. So he +has driven me to centering my thoughts on the child. I've got to have +something to warm up to. And any love I may lavish on this +prairie-chick of mine, who has to face life with the lack of so many +things, will not only be a help to the boy, but will be a help to me, +the part of Me that I'm sometimes so terribly afraid of. + +Yet I can't help wondering if Duncan has any excuses for claiming that +it's personal selfishness which prompts me to keep my boy close to my +side. And am I harming him, without knowing it, in keeping him here +under my wing? Schools are all right, in a way, but surely a good +mother can do as much in the molding of a boy's mind as a +boarding-school with a file of Ph.D.'s on its staff. But am I a good +mother? And should I trust myself, in a matter like this, to my own +feelings? Men, in so many things, are better judges than women. Yet it +has just occurred to me that all men do not think alike. I've been +sitting back and wondering what kindly old Peter would say about it. +And I've decided to write Peter and ask what he advises. He'll tell +the truth, I know, for Peter is as honest as the day is long.... + +I've just been up to make sure the children were properly covered in +bed. And it disturbed me a little to find that without even thinking +about it I went to Dinkie first. It seemed like accidental +corroboration of all that Duncan has been saying. But I stood studying +him as he lay there asleep. It frightened me a little, to find him so +big. If it's true, as Duncan threatens, that time will tend to turn +him away from me, it's something that I'm going to fight tooth and +nail. And I've seen no sign of it, as yet. With every month and every +year that's added to his age he grows more companionable, more able to +bridge the chasm between two human souls. We have more interests in +common, more things to talk about. And day by day Dinkie is reaching +up to my clumsily mature way of looking at life. He can come to me +with his problems, knowing I'll always give him a hearing, just as he +used to come to me with his baby cuts and bruises, knowing they would +be duly kissed and cared for. Yet some day, I have just remembered, +he may have problems that can't be brought to me. But that day, please +God, I shall defer as long as possible. Already we have our own little +secrets and private compacts and understandings. I don't want my boy +to be a mollycoddle. But I want him to have his chance in the world. I +want him to be somebody. I can't reconcile myself to the thought of +him growing up to wear moose-mittens and shoe-packs and stretching +barb-wire in blue-jeans and riding a tractor across a prairie +back-township. I refuse to picture him getting bent and gray wringing +a livelihood out of an over-cropped ranch fourteen miles away from a +post-office and a world away from the things that make life most worth +living. If he were an ordinary boy, I might be led to think +differently. But my Dinkie is not an ordinary boy. There's a spark of +the unusual, of the exceptional, in that laddie. And I intend to fan +that spark, whatever the cost may be, until it breaks out into +genius. + + + + +_Sunday the Twenty-Eighth_ + + +I've had scant time for introspection during the last five days, for +Struthers has been in bed with lumbago, and the weight of the +housework reverted to me. But Whinstane Sandy brought his precious +bottle of Universal Ointment in from the bunk-house, and while that +fiery mixture warmed her lame back, the thought of its origin probably +warmed her lonely heart. I have suddenly wakened up to the fact that +Struthers is getting on a bit. She is still the same efficient and +self-obliterating mainstay of the kitchen that she ever was, but she +grows more "sot" in her ways, more averse to any change in her daily +routine, and more despairing of ever finally and completely capturing +that canny old Scotsman whom we still so affectionately designate as +Whinnie, in short for Whinstane Sandy. Whinnie, I'm afraid, still +nurses the fixed idea that everything in petticoats and as yet +unwedded is after him. And it is only by walking with the utmost +circumspection that he escapes their wiles and by maintaining an +unbroken front withstands their unseemly advances. + +The new school-teacher has arrived, and is to live with us here at +Casa Grande. I have my reasons for this. In the first place, it will +be a help to Dinkie in his studies. In the second place, it means that +the teacher can pack my boy back and forth to school, in bad weather, +and next month when Poppsy joins the ranks of the learners, can keep a +more personal eye on that little tot's movements. And in the third +place the mere presence of another male at Casa Grande seems to dilute +the acids of home life. + +Gershom Binks is the name of this new teacher, and I have just learned +that in the original Hebrew "Gershom" not inappropriately means "a +stranger there." He is a sophomore (a most excellent word, that, when +you come to inquire into its etymology!) from the University of +Minnesota and is compelled to teach the young idea, for a time, to +accumulate sufficient funds to complete his course, which he wants to +do at Ann Arbor. And Gershom is a very tall and very thin and very +short-sighted young man, with an Adam's apple that works up and down +with a two-inch plunge over the edge of his collar when he +talks--which he does somewhat extensively. He wears glasses with big +bulging lenses, glasses which tend to hide a pair of timid and +brown-October-aleish eyes with real kindliness in them. He looks +ill-nourished, but I can detect nothing radically wrong with his +appetite. It's merely that, like Cassius, he thinks too much. And I'm +going to fatten that boy up a bit, before the year is out, or know the +reason why. He may be a trifle self-conscious and awkward, but he's +also amazingly clean of both body and mind, and it will be no +hardship, I know, to have him under our roof. And for all his devotion +to Science, he reads his Bible every night--which is more than Chaddie +McKail does! He rather took the wind out of my sails by demanding, the +first morning at breakfast, if I knew that one half-ounce of the web +of the spider--the arachnid of the order _Araneida_, he explained--if +stretched out in a straight line would reach from the city of Chicago +to the city of Paris. I told him that this was a most wonderful and a +most interesting piece of information and hoped that some day we could +verify it by actual test. Yet when I inquired whether he meant merely +the environs of the city of Paris, or the very heart of the city such +as the Place de l'Opéra, he studied me with the meditative eye with +which Huxley must have once studied beetles. + +Dinky-Dunk, I notice, is as restive as a bull-moose in black-fly +season. He's doing his work on the land, as about every ranch-owner +has to, whether he's happily married or not, but he's doing it without +any undue impression of its epical importance. I heard him observe, +yesterday, that if he could only get his hands on enough ready money +he'd like to swing into land business in a live center like Calgary. +He has a friend there, apparently, who has just made a clean-up in +city real estate and bought his wife a Detroit Electric and built a +home for himself that cost forty thousand dollars. I reminded +Dinky-Dunk, when he had finished, that we really must have a new +straining-mesh in the milk-separator. He merely looked at me with a +sour and morose eye as he got up and went out to his team. + +Surely these men-folks are a dissatisfied lot! Gershom to-night +complained that his own name of "Gershom Binks" impressed him as about +the ugliest name that was ever hitched on to a scholar and a +gentlemen. And later on, after I'd opened my piano and tried to +console myself with a tu'penny draught of Grieg, he inspected the +instrument and informed me that it was really evolved from the +six-stringed harps of the fourth Egyptian dynasty, which in the fifth +dynasty was made with a greatly enlarged base, thus giving the +rudimentary beginning of a soundboard. + +I am learning a lot from Gershom! And so are my kiddies, for that +matter. I begin, in fact, to feel like royalty with a private tutor, +for every night now Dinkie and Poppsy and Gershom sit about the +living-room table and drink of the founts of wisdom. But we have a +teacher here who loves to teach. And he is infinitely patient and kind +with my little toddlers. Dinkie already asks him questions without +number, while Poppsy gratefully but decorously vamps him with her +infantine gazes. Then Gershom--Heaven bless his scholastic old +high-browed solemnity--has just assured me that Dinkie betrays many +evidences of an exceptionally bright mind. + + + + +_Friday the Second_ + + +My husband yesterday accused me of getting moss-backed. He had been +harping on the city string again and asked me if I intended to live +and die a withered beauty on a back-trail ranch. + +That "withered beauty" hurt, though I did my best to ignore it, for +the time at least. And Dinky-Dunk went on to say that it struck him as +one of life's little ironies that _I_ should want to stick to the sort +of life we were leading, remembering what I'd come from. + +"Dinky-Dunk," I told him, "it's terribly hard to explain exactly how I +feel about it all. I suppose I could never make you see it as I see +it. But it's a feeling like loyalty, loyalty to the land that's given +us what we have. And it's also a feeling of disliking to see one old +rule repeating itself: what has once been a crusade becoming merely a +business. To turn and leave our land now, it seems to me, would make +us too much like those soulless soil-robbers you used to rail at, like +those squatters who've merely squeezed out what they could and have +gone on, like those land-miners who take all they can get and stand +ready to put nothing back. Why, if we were all like that, we'd have no +country here. We'd be a wilderness, a Barren Grounds that went from +the Border up to the Circle. But there's something bigger than that +about it all. I love the prairie. Just why it is, I don't know. It's +too fundamental to be fashioned into words, and I never realized how +deep it was until I went back to the city that time. One can just say +it, and let it go at that: _I love the prairie._ It isn't merely its +bigness, just as it isn't altogether its freedom and its openness. +Perhaps it's because it keeps its spirit of the adventurous. I love it +the same as my children love _The Arabian Nights_ and _The Swiss +Family Robinson_. I thought it was mostly cant, once, that cry about +being next to nature, but the more I know about nature the more I feel +with Pope that naught but man is vile, to speak as impersonally, my +dear Diddums, as the occasion will permit. I'm afraid I'm like that +chickadee that flew into the bunk-house and Whinnie caught and put in +a box-cage for Dinkie. I nearly die at the thought of being cooped up. +I want clean air and open space about me." + +"I never dreamed you'd been Indianized to that extent," murmured my +husband. + +"Being Indianized," I proceeded, "seems to carry the inference of also +being barbarized. But it isn't quite that, Dinky-Dunk, for there's +something almost spiritually satisfying about this prairie life if +you've only got the eyes to see it. I think that's because the prairie +always seems so majestically beautiful to me. I can see your lip curl +again, but I know I'm right. When I throw open my windows of a morning +and see that placid old never-ending plain under its great wash of +light something lifts up in my breast, like a bird, and no matter how +a mere man has been doing his best to make me miserable that something +stands up on the tip of my heart and does its darnedest to sing. It +impresses me as life on such a sane and gigantic scale that I want to +be an actual part of it, that I positively ache to have a share in its +immensities. It seems so fruitful and prodigal and generous and +patient. It's so open-handed in the way it produces and gives and +returns our love. And there's a completeness about it that makes me +feel it can't possibly be wrong." + +"The Eskimo, I suppose, feels very much the same in his little igloo +of ice with a pot of whale-blubber at his elbow," observed my +husband. + +"You're a brute, my dear Diddums, and more casually cruel than a +Baffin-land cannibal," I retorted. "But we'll let it pass. For I'm +talking about something that's too fundamental to be upset by a bitter +tongue. There was a time, I know, when I used to fret about the finer +things I thought I was losing out of life, about the little hand-made +fripperies people have been forced to conjure up and carpenter +together to console them for having to live in human beehives made of +steel and concrete. But I'm beginning to find out that joy isn't a +matter of geography and companionship isn't a matter of over-crowded +subways. And the strap-hangers and the train-catchers and the +first-nighters can have what they've got. I don't seem to envy them +the way I used to. I don't need a Louvre when I've got the Northern +Lights to look at. And I can get along without an Æolian Hall when +I've got a little music in my own heart--for it's only what you've got +there, after all, that really counts in this world!" + +"All of which means," concluded my husband, "that you are most +unmistakably growing old!" + +"You have already," I retorted, "referred to me as a withered +beauty." + +Dinky-Dunk studied me long and intently. I even felt myself turning +pink under that prolonged stare of appraisal. + +"You are still easy to look at," he over-slangily and over-generously +admitted. "But I do regret that you aren't a little easier to live +with!" + +I could force a little laugh, at that, but I couldn't quite keep a +tremor out of my voice when I spoke again. + +"I'm sorry you see only my bad side, Dinky-Dunk. But it's kindness +that seems to bring everything that is best out of us women. We're +terribly like sliced pineapple in that respect: give us just a +sprinkling of sugar, and out come all the juices!" + +It was Dinky-Dunk's color that deepened a little as he turned and +knocked out his pipe. + +"That's a Chaddie McKail argument," he merely observed as he stood up. +"And a Chaddie McKail argument impresses me as suspiciously like Swiss +cheese: it doesn't seem to be genuine unless you can find plenty of +holes in it." + +I did my best to smile at his humor. + +"But this isn't an argument," I quietly corrected. "I'd look at it +more in the nature of an ultimatum." + +That brought him up short, as I had intended it to do. He stood +worrying over it as Bobs and Scotty worry over a bone. + +"I'm afraid," he finally intoned, "I've been repeatedly doing you the +great injustice of underestimating your intelligence!" + +"That," I told him, "is a point where I find silence imposed upon +me." + +He didn't speak until he got to the door. + +"Well, I'm glad we've cleared the air a bit anyway," he said with a +grim look about his Holbein Astronomer old mouth as he went out. + +But we haven't cleared the air. And it disturbs me more than I can say +to find that I have reservations from my husband. It bewilders me to +see that I can't be perfectly candid with him. But there are certain +deeper feelings that I can no longer uncover in his presence. +Something holds me back from explaining to him that this fixed dread +of mine for all cities is largely based on my loss of little Pee-Wee. +For if I hadn't gone to New York that time, to Josie Langdon's +wedding, I might never have lost my boy. They did the best they +could, I suppose, before their telegrams brought me back, but they +didn't seem to understand the danger. And little did I dream, before +the Donnelly butler handed me that first startling message just as we +were climbing into the motor to go down to the Rochambeau to meet +Chinkie and Tavvy, that within a week I was to sit and watch the +cruelest thing that can happen in this world. I was to see a small +child die. I was to watch my own Pee-Wee pass quietly away. + +I have often wondered, since, why I never shed a tear during all those +terrible three days. I couldn't, in some way, though the nurse herself +was crying, and poor old Whinnie and Struthers were sobbing together +next to the window, and dour old Dinky-Dunk, on the other side of the +bed, was racking his shoulders with smothered sobs as he held the +little white hand in his and the warmth went forever out of the little +fingers where his foolish big hand was trying to hold back the life +that couldn't be kept there. The old are ready to die, or can make +themselves ready. They have run their race and had their turn at +living. But it seems cruel hard to see a little tot, with eagerness +still in his heart, taken away, taken away with the wonder of things +still in his eyes. It stuns you. It makes you rebel. It leaves a scar +that Time itself can never completely heal. + +Yet through it all I can still hear the voice of valorous old Whinnie +as he patted my shoulder and smiled with the brine still in the seams +of his furrowed old face. "We'll thole through, lassie; we'll thole +through!" he said over and over again. Yes; we'll thole through. And +this is only the uncovering of old wounds. And one must keep one's +heart and one's house in order, for with us we still have the living. + +But Dinky-Dunk can't completely understand, I'm afraid, this morbid +hankering of mine to keep my family about me, to have the two chicks +that are left to me close under my wing. And never once, since Pee-Wee +went, have I actually punished either of my children. It may be wrong, +but I can't help it. I don't want memories of violence to be left +corroding and rankling in my mind. And I'd hate to see any child of +mine cringe, like an ill-treated dog, at every lift of the hand. There +are better ways of controlling them, I begin to feel, than through +fear. Their father, I know, will never agree with me on this matter. +He will always insist on mastery, open and undisputed mastery, in his +own house. He is the head of this Clan McKail, the sovereign of this +little circle. For we can say what we will about democracy, but when +a child is born unto a man that man unconsciously puts on the purple. +He becomes the ruler and sits on the throne of authority. He even +seeks to cloak his weaknesses and his mistakes in that threadbare old +fabrication about the divine right of kings. But I can see that he is +often wrong, and even my Dinkie can see that he is not always right in +his decrees. More and more often, of late, I've observed the boy +studying his father, studying him with an impersonal and critical eye. +And this habit of silent appraisal is plainly something which Duncan +resents, and resents keenly. He's beginning to have a feeling, I'm +afraid, that he can't quite get _at_ the boy. And there's a youthful +shyness growing up in Dinkie which seems to leave him ashamed of any +display of emotion before his father. I can see that it even begins to +exasperate Duncan a little, to be shut out behind those incontestable +walls of reserve. It's merely, I'm sure, that the child is so terribly +afraid of ridicule. He already nurses a hankering to be regarded as +one of the grown-ups and imagines there's something rather babyish in +any undue show of feeling. Yet he is hungry for affection. And he +aches, I know, for the approbation of his male parent, for the +approval of a full-grown man whom he can regard as one of his own +kind. He even imitates his father in the way in which he stands in +front of the fire, with his heels well apart. And he gives me chills +up the spine by pulling short on one bridle-rein and making Buntie, +his mustang-pony, pirouette just as the wicked-tempered Briquette +sometimes pirouettes when his father is in the saddle. Yet +Dinky-Dunk's nerves are a bit ragged and there are times when he's not +always just with the boy, though it's not for me to confute what the +instinctive genius of childhood has already made reasonably clear to +Dinkie's discerning young eye. But I can not, of course, encourage +insubordination. All I can do is to ignore the unwelcome and try to +crowd it aside with happier things. I want my boy to love me, as I +love him. And I think he does. I _know_ he does. That knowledge is an +azure and bottomless lake into which I can toss my blackest pebbles of +fear, my flintiest doubts of the future. + + + + +_Sunday the Fourth_ + + +I wish I could get by the scruff of the neck that sophomoric old +philosopher who once said nothing survives being thought of. For I've +been learning, this last two or three days, just how wide of the mark +he shot. And it's all arisen out of Dinky-Dunk's bland intimation that +I am "a withered beauty." Those words have held like a fish-hook in +the gills of my memory. If they'd come from somebody else they +mightn't have meant so much. But from one's own husband--Wow!--they go +in like a harpoon. And they have given me a great deal to think about. +There are times, I find, when I can accept that intimation of slipping +into the sere and yellow leaf without revolt. Then the next moment it +fills me with a sort of desperation. I refuse to go up on the shelf. I +see red and storm against age. I refuse to bow to the inevitable. My +spirit recoils at the thought of decay. For when you're fading you're +surely decaying, and when you're decaying you're approaching the end. +So stop, Father Time, stop, or I'll get out of the car! + +But we can't get out of the car. That's the tragic part of it. We have +to go on, whether we like it or not. We have to buck up, and grin and +bear it, and make the best of a bad bargain. And Heaven knows I've +never wanted to be one of the Glooms! I've no hankering to sit with +the Sob Sisters and pump brine over the past. I'm light-hearted enough +if they'll only give me a chance. I've always believed in getting what +we could out of life and looking on the sunny side of things. And the +disturbing part of it is, I don't _feel_ withered--not by a jugful! +There are mornings when I can go about my homely old duties singing +like a prairie Tetrazzini. There are days when I could do a +hand-spring, if for nothing more than to shock my solemn old +Dinky-Dunk out of his dourness. There are times when we go skimming +along the trail with the crystal-cool evening air in our faces and the +sun dipping down toward the rim of the world when I want to thank +Somebody I can't see for Something-or-other I can't define. _Dum +vivimus vivamus._ + +But it seems hard to realize that I'm a sedate and elderly lady +already on the shady side of thirty. A woman over thirty years +old--and I can remember the days of my intolerant youth when I +regarded the woman of thirty as an antiquated creature who should be +piously preparing herself for the next world. And it doesn't take +thirty long to slip into forty. And then forty merges into fifty--and +there you are, a nice old lady with nervous indigestion and +knitting-needles and a tendency to breathe audibly after ascending the +front-stairs. No wonder, last night, it drove me to taking a volume of +George Moore down from the shelf and reading his chapter on "The Woman +of Thirty." But I found small consolation in that over-uxorious essay, +feeling as I did that I knew life quite as well as any amorous +studio-rat who ever made copy out of his mottled past. So I was +driven, in the end, to studying myself long and intently in the +broken-hinged mirrors of my dressing-table. And I didn't find much +there to fortify my quailing spirit. I was getting on a bit. I was +curling up a little around the edges. There was no denying that fact. +For I could see a little fan-light of lines at the outer corner of +each eye. And down what Dinky-Dunk once called the honeyed corners of +my mouth went another pair of lines which clearly came from too much +laughing. But most unmistakably of all there was a line coming under +my chin, a small but tell-tale line, announcing the fact that I wasn't +losing any in weight, and standing, I suppose, one of the foot-hills +which precede the Rocky-Mountain dewlaps of old age. It wouldn't be +long, I could see, before I'd have to start watching my diet, and +looking for a white hair or two, and probably give up horseback +riding. And then settle down into an ingle-nook old dowager with a +hassock under _my_ feet and a creak in my knees and a fixed conviction +that young folks never acted up in _my_ youth as they act up +nowadays. + +I tried to laugh it away, but my heart went down like a dredge-dipper. +Whereupon I set my jaw, which didn't make me look any younger. But I +didn't much care, for the mirror had already done its worst. + +"Not muchee!" I said as I sat there making faces at myself. "You're +still one of the living. The bloom may be off in a place or two, but +you're sound to the core, and serviceable for many a year. So _sursum +corda! 'Rung ho! Hira Singh!_' as Chinkie taught us to shout in the +old polo days. And that means, Go in and win, Chaddie McKail, and die +with your boots on if you have to." + +I was still intent on that study of my robust-looking but slightly +weather-beaten map when Dinky-Dunk walked in and caught me in the +middle of my Narcissus act. + +"'All is vanity saith the Preacher,'" he began. But he stopped short +when I swung about at him. For I hadn't, after all, been able to +carpenter together even a whale-boat of consolation out of my wrecked +schooner of hope. + +"Oh, Kakaibod," I wailed, "I'm a pie-faced old has-been, and nobody +will ever love me again!" + +He only laughed, on his way out, and announced that I seemed to be +getting my share of loving, as things went. But he didn't take back +what he said about me being withered. And the first thing I shall do +to-morrow, when Gershom comes down to breakfast, will be to ask him +how old Cleopatra was when she brought Antony to his knees and how +antiquated Ninon D'Enclos was when she lost her power over that +semi-civilized creature known as Man. Gershom will know, for Gershom +knows everything. + + + + +_Wednesday the Seventh_ + + +Gershom has been studying some of my carbon-prints. He can't for the +life of him understand why I consider Dewing's _Old-fashioned Gown_ so +beautiful, or why I should love Childe Hassam's _Church at Old Lyme_ +or see anything remarkable about Metcalf's _May Night_. But I cherish +them as one cherishes photographs of lost friends. + +A couple of the Horatio Walker's, he acknowledged, seemed to mean +something to him. But Gershom's still in the era when he demands a +story in the picture and could approach Monet and Degas only by way of +Meissonier and Bouguereau. And a print, after all, is only a print. +He's slightly ashamed to admire beauty as mere beauty, contending that +at the core of all such things there should be a moral. So we +pow-wowed for an hour and more over the threadbare old theme and the +most I could get out of Gershom was that the lady in _The +Old-fashioned Gown_ reminded him of me, only I was more vital. But all +that talk about landscape and composition and line and tone made me +momentarily homesick for a glimpse of Old Lyme again, before I go to +my reward. + +But the mood didn't last. And I no longer regret what's lost. I don't +know what mysterious Divide it is I have crossed over, but it seems to +be peace I want now instead of experience. I'm no longer envious of +the East and all it holds. I'm no longer fretting for wider circles of +life. The lights may be shining bright on many a board-walk, at this +moment, but it means little to this ranch-lady. What I want now is a +better working-plan for that which has already been placed before me. +Often and often, in the old days, when I realized how far away from +the world this lonely little island of Casa Grande and its inhabitants +stood, I used to nurse a ghostly envy for the busier tideways of life +from which we were banished. I used to feel that grandeur was in some +way escaping me. I could picture what was taking place in some of +those golden-gray old cities I had known: The Gardens of the +Luxembourg when the horse-chestnuts were coming out in bloom, and the +Château de Madrid in the Bois at the luncheon hour, or the Pre Catalan +on a Sunday with heavenly sole in lemon and melted butter and a still +more heavenly waltz as you sat eating _fraises des bois_ smothered in +thick _crême d'Isigny_. Or the Piazzi di Spagna on Easter Sunday with +the murmur of Rome in your ears and the cars and carriages flashing +through the green-gold shadows of the Pincio. Or Hyde Park in May, +with the sun sifting through the brave old trees and flashing on the +helmets of the Life Guards as the King goes by in a scarlet uniform +with the blue Order of the Garter on his breast, or Park Lane on a +glorious light-and-shadow afternoon in June and a dip into the +familiar old Americanized clangor at the Cecil; or Chinkie's place in +Devonshire about a month earlier, sitting out on the terrace wrapped +in steamer-rugs and waiting for the moon to come up and the first +nightingale to sing. Of Fifth Avenue shining almost bone-white in the +clear December sunlight and the salted nuts and orange-blossom +cocktails at Sherry's, or the Plaza tea-room at about five o'clock in +the afternoon with the smell of Turkish tobacco and golden pekoe and +hot-house violets and Houbigant's _Quelque-fleurs_ all tangled up +together. Or the City of Wild Parsley in March with a wave of wild +flowers breaking over the ruins of Selinunte and the tumbling pillars +of the Temple of Olympian Zeus lying time-mellowed in the clear +Sicilian sunlight! + +They were all lovely enough, and still are, I suppose, but it's a +loveliness in some way involved with youth. So the memory of those +far-off gaieties, which, after all, were so largely physical, no +longer touch me with unrest. They're wine that's drunk and water +that's run under the bridge. Younger lips can drink of that cup, which +was sweet enough in its time. Let the newer girls dance their legs off +under the French crystals of the Ritz, and powder their noses over the +Fountain of the Sunken Boat, and eat the numbered duck so +reverentially doled out at La Tour d'Argent and puff their cigarettes +behind the beds of begonias and marguerites at the Château Madrid. +They too will get tired of it, and step aside for others. For the +petal falls from the blossom and the blossom plumps out into fruit. +And all those golden girls, when their day is over, must slip away +from those gardens of laughter. When they don't, they only make +themselves ridiculous. For there's nothing sadder than an antique lady +of other days decking herself out in the furbelows of a lost youth. +And I've got Dinky-Dunk's overalls to patch and my bread to set, so I +can't think much more about it to-night. But after I've done my +chores, and before I go up to bed, I'm going to read _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ +right through to the end. I'll do it in front of the fire, with my +feet up and with three Ontario Northern Spy apples on a plate beside +me, to be munched as Audrey herself might have munched them, oblivious +of any Touchstone and his reproving eyes. + +I have stopped to ponder, however, how much of this morbid dread of +mine for big cities is due to that short and altogether unsatisfactory +visit to New York, to that sense of coming back a stranger and finding +old friends gone and those who were left with such entirely new +interests. + +I was out of it, completely and dishearteningly out of it. And my +clothes were all wrong. My hats were wrong; my shoes were wrong; and +every rag I had on me was in some way wrong. I was a tourist from the +provinces. And I wasn't up-to-date with either what was on me or was +_in_ me. I didn't even know the new subway routes or the telephone +rules or the proper places to go for tea. The Metropolitan looked +cramped and shoddy and _Tristan_ seemed shoddily sung to me. There was +no thrill to it. And even _The Jewels of the Madonna_ impressed me as +a bit garish and off color, with the Apache Dance of the last act +almost an affront to God and man. I even asked myself, when I found +that I had lost the trick of laughing at bridal-suite farces, if it +was the possession of children that had changed me. For when you're +with children you must in some way match their snowy innocence with a +kindred coloring of innocence, very much as the hare and the weasel +and the ptarmigan turn white to match the whiteness of our northern +winter. Yet I was able to wring pure joy out of Rachmaninoff's playing +at Carnegie Hall, with a great man making music for music's sake. I +loved the beauty and balance and splendid sanity of that playing, +without keyboard fire-works and dazzle and glare. But Rachmaninoff was +the exception. Even Central Park seemed smaller than of old, and I +couldn't remember which drives Dinky-Dunk and I had taken in the +historic old hansom-cab after our equally historic marriage by +ricochet. Fifth Avenue itself was different, the caterpillar of trade +having crawled a little farther up the stalk of fashion, for the +shops, I found, went right up to the Park, and the old W. K. house +where we once danced our long-forgotten Dresden China Quadrille, in +imitation of the equally forgotten Eighty-Three event, confronted me +as a beehive of business offices. I couldn't quite get used to the new +names and the new faces and the new shops and the side-street theaters +and the thought of really nice girls going to a prize-fight in +Madison Square Garden, and the eternal and never-ending talk about +drinks, about where and how to get them, and how to mix them, and how +much Angostura to put into 'em, and the musty ale that used to be had +at Losekam's in Washington, and the _Beaux Arts_ cocktails that used +to come with a dash of absinthe, and the shipment of pinch-neck Scotch +which somebody smuggled in on his cruiser-yacht from the east end of +Cuba, and so-forth and so-forth until I began to feel that the only +important thing in the world was the possession and dispensation of +alcohol. And out of it I got the headache without getting the fun. I +had the same dull sense of being cheated which came to me in my +flapper days when I fell asleep with a mouthful of contraband gum and +woke up in the morning with my jaw-muscles tired--I'd been facing all +the exertion without getting any of the satisfaction. + +The one bright spot to me, in that lost city of my childhood, was the +part of Madison Avenue which used to be known as Murray Hill, the +right-of-way along the west sidewalk of which I once commandeered for +an afternoon's coasting. I could see again, as I glanced down the +familiar slope, the puffy figure of old Major Elmes, who in those +days was always pawing somebody, since he seemed to believe with +Novalis that he touched heaven when he placed his hand on a human +body. I could see myself sky-hooting down that icy slope on my +coaster, approaching the old Major from the rear and peremptorily +piping out: "One side, please!" For I was young then, and I expected +all life to make way for me. But the old Major betrayed no intention +of altering his solemnly determined course at any such juvenile +suggestion, with the result that he sat down on me bodily, and for the +next two blocks approached his club in Madison Square in a manner and +at a speed which he had in no wise anticipated. But, _Eheu_, how long +ago it all seemed! + + + + +_Saturday the Tenth_ + + +Peter has written back in answer to my question as to the expediency +of sending my boy off to a boarding-school. He put all he had to say +in two lines. They were: + +"_I had a mother like Dinkie's, I'd stick to her until the stars were +dust._" + +That was very nice of Peter, of course, but I don't imagine he had any +idea of the peck of trouble he was going to stir up at Casa Grande. +For Dinky-Dunk picked up the sheet of paper on which that +light-hearted message had been written and perused the two lines, +perused them with a savagery which rather disturbed me. He read them +for the second time, and then he put them down. His eye, as he +confronted me, was a glacial one. + +"It's too bad we can't run this show without the interference of +outsiders," he announced as he stalked out of the room. + +I've been thinking the thing over, and trying to get my husband's +view-point. But I can't quite succeed. There has always been a touch +of the satyric in Dinky-Dunk's attitude toward Peter's weekly letter +to my boy. He has even intimated that they were written in a new kind +of Morse, the inference being that they were intended to carry +messages in cipher to eyes other than Dinkie's. But Peter is much too +honest a man for any such resort to subterfuge. And Dinky-Dunk has +always viewed with a hostile eye the magazines and books and toys +which big-hearted Peter has showered out on us. Peter always was +ridiculously open-handed. And he always loved my Dinkie. And it's only +natural that our thoughts should turn back to where our love has been +left. Peter, I know, gets quite as much fun out of those elaborately +playful letters to Dinkie as Dinkie does himself. And it's left the +boy more anxious to learn, to the end that he may pen a more +respectable reply to them. + +Some of Peter's gifts, it is true, have been embarrassingly ornate, +but Peter, who has been given so much, must have remembered how little +has come to my kiddies. It was my intention, for a while, to talk this +over with Dinky-Dunk, to try to make him see it in a more reasonable +light. But I have now given up that intention. There's a phantasmal +something that holds me back.... + +I dreamt last night that my little Dinkie was a grown youth in a Greek +academy, wearing a toga and sitting on a marble bench overlooking a +sea of lovely sapphire. There both Peter and Percy, also arrayed in +togas, held solemn discourse with my offspring and finally agreed that +once they were through with him he would be the Wonder of the Age.... + +Dinky-Dunk asked me point-blank to-day if I'd consider the sale of +Casa Grande, provided he got the right price for the ranch. I felt, +for a moment, as though the bottom had been knocked out of my world. +But it showed me the direction in which my husband's thoughts have +been running of late. And I just as pointedly retorted that I'd never +consent to the sale of Casa Grande. It's not merely because it's our +one and only home. It's more because of the little knoll where the +four Manitoba maples have been set and the row of prairie-roses have +been planted along the little iron fence, the little iron fence which +twice a year I paint a virginal white, with my own hands. For that's +where my Pee-Wee sleeps, and that lonely little grave must never pass +out of my care, to be forgotten and neglected and tarnished with +time. It's not a place of sorrow now, but more an altar, duly tended, +the flower-covered bed of my Pee-Wee, of my poor little Pee-Wee who +was so brimming with life and love. He used to make me think of a +humming-bird in a garden--and now all I have left of him is my small +chest of toys and trinkets and baby-clothes. God, I know, will be good +to that lonely little newcomer in His world of the statelier dead, in +His gallery of whispering ghosts. Oh, be good to him, God! Be good to +him, or You shall be no God of mine! I can't think of him as dead, as +going out like a candle, as melting into nothingness as the little +bones under their six feet of earth molder away. But my laddie is +gone. And I must not be morbid. As Peter once said, misery loves +company, but the company is apt to seek more convivial quarters. Yet +something has gone out of my life, and that something drives me back +to my Dinkie and my Poppsy with a sort of fierceness in my hunger to +love them, to make the most of them. + +Gershom, who has been giving Poppsy a daily lesson at home, has just +inquired why she shouldn't be sent to school along with Dinkie. And +her father has agreed. It gave me the wretched feeling, for a moment +or two, that they were conspiring to take my last baby away from me. +But I have to bow to the fact that I no longer possess one, since +Poppsy announced her preference, the other day, for a doll "with real +livings in it." She begins to show as fixed an aversion to baby-talk +as that entertained by old Doctor Johnson himself, and no longer +yearns to "do yidin on the team-tars," as she used to express it. The +word "birthday" is still "birfday" with her, and "water" is still +"wagger," but she now religiously eschews all such reiterative +diminutives as "roundy-poundy" and "Poppsy-Woppsy" and "beddy-bed." +She has even learned, after much effort, to convert her earlier "keam +of feet" into the more legitimate and mature "cream of wheat." And now +that she has a better mastery of the sibilants the charm has rather +gone out of the claim, which I so laboriously taught her, that "Daddy +is all feet," meaning, of course, that he was altogether sweet--which +he gave small sign of being when he first caught the point of my +patient schooling. She is not so quick-tongued as her brother Dinkie, +but she has a natural fastidiousness which makes her long for +alignment with the proprieties. She is, in fact, a conformist, a +sedate and dignified little lady who will never be greatly given to +the spilling of beans and the upsetting of apple-carts. She is, in +many ways, amazingly like her pater. She will, I know, be a nice girl +when she grows up, without very much of that irresponsibility which +seems to have been the bugbear of her maternal parent. I'm even +beginning to believe there's something in the old tradition about +ancestral traits so often skipping a generation. At any rate, that +crazy-hearted old Irish grandmother of mine passed on to me a muckle +o' her wildness, the mad County Clare girl who swore at the vicar and +rode to hounds and could take a seven-barred gate without turning a +hair and was apt to be always in love or in debt or in hot water. She +died too young to be tamed, I'm told, for say what you will, life +tames us all in the end. Even Lady Hamilton took to wearing +red-flannel petticoats before she died, and Buffalo Bill faded down +into plain Mr. William Cody, and the abducted Helen of Troy gave many +a day up to her needlework, we are told, and doubtlessly had trouble +with both her teeth and her waist measurement. + +Dinky-Dunk is proud of his Poppsy and has announced that it's about +time we tucked the "Poppsy" away with her baby-clothes and resorted to +the use of the proper and official "Pauline Augusta." So Pauline we +shall try to have it, after this. There are several things, I think, +which draw Dinky-Dunk and his Poppsy--I mean his Pauline--together. +One is her likeness to himself. Another is her tractability, though I +hate to hitch so big a word on to so small a lady. And still another +is the fact that she is a girl. There's a subliminal play of +sex-attraction about it, I suppose, just as there probably is between +Dinkie and me. And there's something very admirable in Pauline +Augusta's staid adoration of her dad. She plays up to him, I can see, +without quite knowing she's doing it. She's hungry for his approval, +and happiest, always, in his presence. Then, too, she makes him +forget, for the time at least, his disappointment in a soul-mate who +hasn't quite measured up to expectations! And I devoutly thank the +Master of Life and Love that my solemn old Dinky-Dunk can thus care +for his one and only daughter. It softens him, and keeps the sordid +worries of the moment from vitrifying his heart. It puts a rainbow in +his sky of every-day work, and gives him something to plan and plot +and live for. And he needs it. We all do. It's our human and natural +hunger for companionship. And as he observed not long ago, if that +hunger can't be satisfied at home, we wander off and snatch what we +can on the wing. Some day when they're rich, I overheard Dinky-Dunk +announcing the other night, Pauline Augusta and her Dad are going to +make the Grand Tour of Europe. And there, undoubtedly, do their best +to pick up a Prince of the Royal Blood and have a château in Lombardy +and a villa on the Riviera and a standing invitation to all the +Embassy Balls! + +Well, not if I know it. None of that penny-a-liner moonshine for my +daughter. And as she grows older, I feel sure, I'll have more +influence over her. She'll begin to realize that the battle of life +hasn't scarred up for nothing this wary-eyed old mater who's beginning +to know a hawk from a henshaw. I've learned a thing or two in my day, +and one or two of them are going to be passed on to my offspring. + + + + +_Thursday the Fifteenth_ + + +Struthers and I have been house-cleaning, for this is the middle of +May, and our reluctant old northern spring seems to be here for good. +It has been backward, this year, but the last of the mud has gone, and +I hope to have my first setting of chicks out in a couple of days. +Dinkie wants to start riding Buntie to school, but his pater says +otherwise. Gershom goes off every morning, with Calamity Kate hitched +to the old buckboard, with my two kiddies packed in next to him and +provender enough for himself and the kiddies and Calamity Kate under +the seat. The house seems very empty when they are away. But some time +about five, every afternoon, I see them loping back along the trail. +Then comes the welcoming bark of old Bobs, and a raid on the +cooky-jar, and traces of bread-and-jelly on two hungry little faces, +and the familiar old tumult about the reanimated rooms of Casa Grande. +Then Poppsy--I beg her ladyship's pardon, for I mean, of course, +Pauline Augusta--has to duly inspect her dolls to assure herself that +they are both well-behaved and spotless as to apparel, for Pauline +Augusta is a stickler as to decorum and cleanliness; and Dinkie falls +to working on his air-ship, which he is this time making quite +independent of Whinnie, whose last creation along that line betrayed a +disheartening disability for flight. But even this second effort, I'm +afraid, is doomed to failure, for more than once I've seen Dinkie back +away and stand regarding his incompetent flier with a look of +frustration on his face. He is always working over machinery--for he +loves anything with wheels--and I'm pretty well persuaded that the +twentieth-century mania of us grown-ups for picking ourselves to +pieces is nothing more than a development of this childish hunger to +get the cover off things and see the works go round. Dinkie makes +wagons and carts and water-wheels, but some common fatality of +incompetence overtakes them all and they are cast aside for +enterprises more novel and more promising. He announces, now, that he +intends to be an engineer. And that recalls the time when I was +convinced in my own soul that he was destined for a life of art, since +he was forever asking me to draw him "a li'l' man," and later on fell +to drawing them himself. He would do his best to inscribe a circle +and then emboss it with perfectly upright hair, as though the person +in question had just been perusing the most stirring of +penny-dreadfuls. Then he would put in two dots of eyes, and one +abbreviated and vertical line for the nose, and another elongated and +horizontal line for the mouth, and arms with extended and extremely +elocutionary fingers, to say nothing of extremely attenuated legs +which invariably toed-out, to make more discernible the silhouette of +the ponderously booted feet. I have several dozen of these "li'l' men" +carefully treasured in an old cigar-box. But he soon lost interest in +these purely anthropocentric creations and broadened out into the +delineation of boats and cars and wheel-barrows and rocking-chairs and +tea-pots, lying along the floor on his stomach for an hour at a time, +his tongue moving sympathetically with every movement of his pencil. +He held the latter clutched close to the point by his stubby little +fingers. + +I had to call a halt on all such artistry, however, for he startled +me, one day, by suddenly going crosseyed. It came, of course, from +working with his nose too close to the paper. I imagined, with a +sinking heart, that it was an affliction which was to stay with him +for the rest of his natural life. But a night's sleep did much to +restore the over-taxed eye-muscles and before the end of a week they +had entirely righted themselves. + +To-morrow Dinkie will probably want to be an aeronaut, and the next +day a cowboy, and the next an Indian scout, for I notice that his +enthusiasms promptly conform to the stimuli with which he chances to +be confronted. Last Sunday he asked me to read Macaulay's _Horatius_ +to him. I could see, after doing so, that it was going to his head +exactly as a second Clover-Club cocktail goes to the head of a +sub-deb. On Tuesday, when I went out about sun-down to get him to help +me gather the eggs, I found that he had made a sword by nailing a bit +of stick across a slat from the hen-house, and also observed that he +had possessed himself of my boiler-top. So I held back, slightly +puzzled. But later on, hearing much shouting and clouting and banging +of tin, I quietly investigated and found Dinkie in the corral-gate, +holding it against all comers. So earnest was he about it, so rapt was +he in that solemn business of warfare, that I decided to slip away +without letting him see me. He was sixteen long centuries away from +Casa Grande, at that moment. He was afar off on the banks of the +Tiber, defending the Imperial City against Lars Porsena and his +footmen. All Rome was at his back, cheering him on, and every time his +hen-coop slat thumped that shredded old poplar gate-post some proud +son of Tuscany bit the dust. + + + + +_Sunday the Twenty-Fifth_ + + +Duncan, it's plain to see, is still in the doldrums. He is +uncommunicative and moody and goes about his work with a listlessness +which is more and more disturbing to me. He surprised his wife the +other day by addressing her as "Lady Selkirk," for the simple reason, +he later explained, that I propose to be monarch of all I survey, with +none to dispute my domain. And a little later he further intimated +that I was like a miser with a pot of gold, satisfied to live anywhere +so long as my precious family-life could go clinking through my +fingers. + +That was last Sunday--a perfect prairie day--when I sat out on the end +of the wagon-box, watching Poppsy and Dinkie. I sat in the warm +sunlight, in a sort of trance, staring at those two children as they +went about their solemn business of play. They impressed me as two +husky and happy-bodied little beings and I remembered that whatever +prairie-life had cost me, it had not cost me the health of my family. +My two bairns had been free of those illnesses and infections which +come to the city child, and I was glad enough to remember it. But I +was unconscious of Dinky-Dunk's cynic eye on me as I sat there +brooding over my chicks. When he spoke to me, in fact, I was thinking +how odd it was that Josie Langdon, on the very day before her +marriage, should have carried me down to the lower end of Fifth Avenue +and led me into the schoolroom of the Church of the Ascension, and +asked me to study Sorolla's _Triste Herencia_ which hangs there. + +I can still see that wonderful canvas where the foreshore of Valencia, +usually so vivacious with running figures and the brightest of +sunlight on dancing sails, had been made the wine-dark sea of the +pagan questioner with the weight of immemorial human woe to shadow it. +Josie had been asking me about marriage and children, for even she was +knowing her more solemn moments in the midst of all that feverishly +organized merriment. But I was surprised, when she slipped a hand +through my arm, to see a tear run down her nose. So I looked up again +at Sorolla's picture of the naked little cripples snatching at their +moment's joy along the water's edge, at his huddled group of maimed +and cast-off orphans trying to be happy without quite knowing how. I +can still see the stunted little bodies, naked in sunlight that +seemed revealing without being invigorating, clustered about the +guardian figure of the tall old priest in black, the somberly +benignant old figure that towered above the little wrecks on crutches +and faced, as majestic as Millet's _Sower_, as austere and unmoved as +Fate itself, a dark sea overhung by a dark sky. Sorolla was great in +that picture, to my way of thinking. He was great in the manner in +which he attunes nature to a human mood, in which he gives you the +sunlight muffled, in some way, like the sunlight during a partial +eclipse, and keys turbulence down to quietude, like the soft pedal +that falls on a noisy street when a hearse goes by. + +Josie felt it, and I felt it, that wordless thinning down of radiance, +that mysterious holding back of warmth, until it seemed to strike a +chill into the bones. It was the darker wing of Destiny hovering over +man's head, deepening at the same time that it shadows the receding +sky-line, so that even the memory of it, a thousand miles away, could +drain the jocund blitheness out of the open prairie and give an air of +pathos and solitude to my own children playing about my feet. Sorolla, +I remembered, had little ones of his own. He _knew_. Life had taught +him, and in teaching, had enriched his art. For the artist, after all, +is the man who cuts up the loaf of his own heart, and butters it with +beauty, and at tuppence a slice hands it to the hungry children of the +world. + +So when Dinky-Dunk laughed at me, for going into a trance over my own +children, I merely smiled condoningly back at him. I felt vaguely +sorry for him. He wasn't getting out of them what I was getting. He +was being cheated, in some way, out of the very harvest for which he +had sowed and waited. And if he had come to me, in that mood of +relapse, if he had come to me with the slightest trace of humility, +with the slightest touch of entreaty, on his face, I'd have hugged his +salt-and-peppery old head to my bosom and begged to start all over +again with a clean slate.... + +Gershom and I get along much better than I had expected. There's +nothing wrong with the boy except his ineradicable temptation to +impart to you his gratuitous tidbits of information. I can't object, +of course, to Gershom having a college education: what I object to is +his trying to give me one. I don't mind his wisdom, but I do hate to +see him tear the whole tree of knowledge up by the roots and floor +one with it. He has just informed me that there are estimated to be +30,000,000,000,000 red blood corpuscles in this body of mine, and I +made him blink by solemnly challenging him to prove it. Quite +frequently and quite sternly, too, he essays to correct my English. He +reproved me for saying: "Go to it, Gershom!" And he declared I was in +error in saying "The goose hangs high," as that was merely a vulgar +corruption for "The goose whangs high," the "whanging" being the call +of the wild geese high in the air when the weather is settled and +fair. We live and learn! + +But I can't help liking this pedagogic old Gershom who takes himself +and me and all the rest of the world so seriously. I like him because +he shares in my love for Dinkie and stands beside Peter himself in the +fondly foolish belief that Dinkie has somewhere the hidden germ of +greatness in him. Not that my boy is one of those precocious little +bounders who are so precious in the eyes of their parents and so +odious to the eyes of the rest of the world. He is a large-boned boy, +almost a rugged-looking boy, and it is only I, knowing him as I do, +who can fathom the sensibilities housed in that husky young body. +There is a misty broodiness in his eyes which leaves them +indescribably lovely to me as I watch him in his moments of raptness. +But that look doesn't last long, for Dinkie can be rough in play and +at times rough in speech, and deep under the crust of character I +imagine I see traces of his Scottish father in him. I watch with an +eagle eye for any outcroppings of that Caledonian-granite strain in +his make-up. I inspect him as Chinkie used to inspect his fruit-trees +for San José scale, for if there is any promise of hardness or cruelty +there I want it killed in the bud. + +But I don't worry as I used to, on that score. He may be rough-built, +but moods cluster thick about him, like butterflies on a shelf of +broken rock. And he is both pliable and responsive. I can shake him, +when in the humor, by the mere telling of a story. I can control his +color, I can excite him and exalt him, and bring him to the verge of +tears, if I care to, by the mere tone of my voice as I read him one of +his favorite tales out of one of Peter's books. But I shrink, in a +way, from toying with those feelings. It seems brutal, cruel, +merciless. For he is, after all, a delicate instrument, to be treated +with delicacy. The soul of him must be kept packed away, like a +violin, in its case of reserve well-padded with discretion. Two +things I see in him: tenseness and beauty. And these are things which +are lost, with rough handling. He shrinks away from brutality. Always, +when he came to the picture of Samson pulling down the pillars of the +temple, in Whinstane Sandy's big old illustrated Bible, he used to +cover with one small hand a certain child on the temple steps as +though to protect to the last that innocent one from the falling +columns and cornices. + +But I'm worried, at times, about Dinky-Dunk's attitude toward the boy. +There are ways in which he demands too much from the child. His father +is often unnecessarily rough in his play with him, seeming to take a +morose delight in goading him to the breaking point and then lamenting +his lack of grit, edging him on to the point of exasperation and then +heaping scorn on him for his weakness. More than once I've seen his +father actually hurt him, although the child was too proud to admit +it. Dinky-Dunk, I think, really wants his boy to be a bigger figure in +the world than his dad. Milord's a middle-aged man now and knows his +limitations. He has realized just how high the supremest high-water +mark of his life will stand. And being human, he must nurse his human +regrets over his failures in life. So now he wishes to see his +thwarted powers come to fuller fruit in his offspring. I'm afraid he'd +even run the risk of sacrificing the boy's happiness for the sake of +knowing Dinkie's wagon was to be hitched to the star of success. For I +know my husband well enough to realize that he has always hankered +after worldly success, that his god, if he had any, has always been +the god of Power. I, too, want to see my son a success. But I want him +to be happy first. I want to see him get some of the things I've been +cheated out of, that I've cheated myself out of. That's the only way +now I can get even with life. I can't live my own days over again. But +I can catch at the trick of living them over again in my Dinkie. + + + + +_Thursday the Twenty-Ninth_ + + +We have arrived at an armistice, Dinky-Dunk and I. It was forced on +us, for things couldn't have gone on in the old intolerable manner. +Dinky-Dunk, I fancy, began to realize that he hadn't been quite fair, +and started making oblique but transparent enough efforts at +appeasement. When he sat down close beside me, and I moved away, he +said in a spirit of exaggerated self-accusation: "I'm afraid I've got +a peach-stain on my reputation!" I retorted, at that, that she had +never impressed me as much of a peach. Whereupon he merely laughed, as +though it were a joke out of a Midnight Revue. Then he clipped a +luridly illustrated advertisement of a nerve-medicine out of his +newspaper and pinned it on my bedroom door, after I had ignored his +tentative knock thereon the night before. The picture showed an anemic +and woebegone couple haggling and shaking their fists at each other, +while a large caption announced that "Thousands of Married Folks Lead +a Cat and Dog Life--Are Cross, Crabbed and Grumpy!"--all of which +could be obviated if they used Oxygated Iron. + +What made it funny, of course, was the ridiculousness of the drawing. +Then Dinky-Dunk, right before the blushing Gershom, accused me of +being a love-piker. I could sniff which way the wind was blowing, but +I sat tight. Then, to cap the climax, my husband announced that he had +something for me which was surely going to melt my mean old prairie +heart. And late that afternoon he came trundling up to Casa Grande +with nothing more nor less than an old prairie-schooner. + +It startled me, when I first caught sight of it. But its acquisition +was not so miraculous as it might have seemed. Dinky-Dunk, who is a +born dickerer, has been trading some of his ranch-stock for town-lots +on the outskirts of Buckhorn. On the back of one of these lots stood a +tumble-down wooden building, and hidden away in this building was the +prairie-schooner. Something about it had caught his fancy, so he had +insisted that it be included in the deal. And home he brought it, with +Tithonus and Tumble-Weed yoked to its antique tongue and his own +Stetsoned figure high on the driving seat. They had told Dinky-Dunk it +wasn't a really-truly authentic prairie-schooner, since practically +all of the trekking north of the Fiftieth Parallel has been done by +means of the Red River cart. But Dinky-Dunk, after looking more +carefully over the heavy-timbered running-gear and the cumbersome +iron-work, and discovering even the sturdy hooks under its belly from +which the pails and pots of earlier travelers must have hung, +concluded that it was one of the genuine old-timers, one of the +"Murphies" once driven by a "bull-whacker" and drawn by "wheelers" and +"pointers." Where it originally came from, Heaven only knows. But it +had been used, five years before, for a centenary procession in the +provincial capital and had emerged into the open again last summer for +a town-booming _Rodeo_ twenty miles down the steel from Buckhorn. It +looked like the dinosaur skeleton in the Museum of Natural History, +with every vestige of its tarpaulin top gone. But Whinnie has already +sewed together a canvas covering for its weather-beaten old roof-ribs, +and has put clean wheat-straw in its box-bottom, so that it makes a +kingly place for my two kiddies to play. I even spotted Dinkie, +enthroned high on the big driving-seat, with a broken binder-whip in +his hand, imagining he was one of the original Forty-Niners pioneering +along the unknown frontiers of an unknown land. I could see him duck +at imaginary arrows and frenziedly defend his family from imaginary +Sioux with an imaginary musket. And I stood beside it this morning, +dreaming of the adventures it must have lumbered through, of the +freight it must have carried and the hopes it must have ferried as it +once crawled westward along the floor of the world, from water-hole to +lonely water-hole. I've been wondering if certain perforations in its +side-boards can be bullet-holes and if certain dents and abrasions in +its timbers mean the hostile arrows of skulking Apaches when women and +children crouched low behind the ramparts of this tiny wooden +fortress. I can't help picturing what those women and children had to +endure, and how trivial, after all, are our puny hardships compared +with theirs. + +And I don't intend to dwell on those hardships. I'm holding out the +hand of compromise to my fellow-trekker. Existence is only a +prairie-schooner, and we have to accommodate ourselves to it. And I +thank Heaven now that I can see things more clearly and accept them +more quietly. That's a lesson Time teaches us. And Father Time, after +all, has to hand us something to make up for so mercilessly +permitting us to grow old. It leaves us more tolerant. We're not +allowed to demand more life, but we can at least ask for more light. +So I intend to be cool-headedly rational about it all. I'm going to +keep Reason on her throne. I'm going to be a bitter-ender, in at least +one thing: I'm going to stick to my Dinky-Dunk to the last ditch. I'm +going to patch up the old top and forget the old scars. For we're in +the same schooner, and we must make the most of it. And if I have to +eat my pot of honey on the grave of all our older hopes, I'm at least +going to dig away at that pot until its bottom is scraped clean. I'm +going to remain the neck-or-nothing woman I once prided myself on +being. I'm even going to overlook Dinky-Dunk's casual cruelty in +announcing, when I half-jokingly inquired why he preferred other women +to his own Better-Half, that no horse eats hay after being turned out +to fresh grass. I'm going on, I repeat, no matter what happens. I'm +going on to the desperate end, like my own Dinkie with the +chocolate-cake when I warned him he'd burst if he dared to eat another +piece and he responded: "Then pass the cake, Mummy--and everybody +stand back!" + + + + +_Tuesday the Fourth_ + + +_Sursum corda_ is the word--so here goes! I am determined to be blithe +and keep the salt of humor sprinkled thick across the butter-crock of +concession. Dinky-Dunk watches me with a guarded and wary eye and +Pauline Augusta does not always approve of me. Yesterday, when I got +on Briquette and made that fire-eater jump the two rain-barrels put +end to end Dinky-Dunk told me I was too old to be taking a chance like +that. So I promptly and deliberately turned a somersault on the +prairie-sod, just to show him I wasn't the old lady he was trying to +make me out. Gershom, who'd just got back with the children and was +unhitching Calamity Kate, retreated with his eyebrows up, toward the +stable. And on the youthful face of Pauline Augusta I saw nothing but +pained incredulity touched with reproof, for Poppsy is not a believer +in the indecorous. She has herself staidly intimated that she'd prefer +the rest of the family to address her as "Pauline Augusta" instead of +"Poppsy" which still so unwittingly creeps into our talk. So +hereafter we must be more careful. For Pauline Augusta can already sew +a fine seam and array her seven dolls with a preciseness and neatness +which is to be highly commended. + +On Saturday, when we motored into Buckhorn for supplies, I escorted +Pauline Augusta to Hunk Granby, the town barber, to have her hair cut +Dutch. Her lip quivered and she gave every indication of an outbreak, +for she was mortally afraid of that strange man and his still stranger +clipping-machine. But I spotted a concert-guitar on a bench at the +back of Hunk's emporium and as it was the noon-hour and there was no +audience, I rendered a jazz _obbligato_ to the snip of the scissors. + +"Say, Birdie, you'll sure have me buck and wing dancin' if you keep +that up!" remarked the man of the shears. I merely smiled and gave him +_Texas Tommy_, _cum gusto_, whereupon he acknowledged he was having +difficulty in making his feet behave. We became quite a companionable +little family, in fact, as the bobbing process went on, and when +Dinky-Dunk called for us as he'd promised he was patently scandalized +to find his superannuated old soul-mate sight-reading _When Katy +Couldn't Katy Wouldn't_--it was a new one to me--in the second ragged +plush shaving-chair of a none too clean barber-shop festooned with +lithographs which would have made old Anthony Comstock turn in his +grave. But you have to be feathered to the toes like a ptarmigan in +this northern country so that rough ways and rough winds can't strike +a chill into you. The barber, in fact, refused to take any money for +Dutching my small daughter's hair, proclaiming that the music was more +than worth it. But my husband, with a dangerous light in his eye, +insisted on leaving four bits on the edge of the shelf loaded down +with bottled beautifiers, and escorted us out to the muddy old +devil-wagon where Dinkie sat awaiting us. + +"Dinky-Dunk," I said with a perfectly straight face as we climbed in, +"what is it gives me such a mysterious influence over men?" + +Instead of answering me, he merely ground his gears as though they had +been his own teeth. So I repeated my question. + +"Why don't you ask that school-teacher of yours?" he demanded. + +"But what," I inquired, "has Gershom got to do with it?" + +He turned and inspected me with such a pointed stare that we nearly +ran into a Bain wagon full of bagged grain. + +"You don't suppose I can't see that that beanpole's fallen in love +with you?" he rudely and raucously challenged. + +"Why, I feel exactly like a mother to that poor boy," I innocently +protested. + +"Mother nothing!" snorted my lord and master. "Any fool could see he's +going mushy on you!" + +I pretended to be less surprised than I really was, but it gave me +considerable to think over. My husband was wrong, in a way, but no +woman feels bad at the thought that somebody is fond of her. It's nice +to know there's a heart or two at which one can still warm one's +outstretched hands. The short-cut to ruin, with a man, is the +knowledge that women are fond of him. But let a woman know that she is +not unloved and she walks the streets of Heaven, to say nothing of +nearly breaking her neck to make herself worthy of those transporting +affections. + +But I soon had other things to think of, that afternoon, for Dinkie +and I had a little secret shopping to do. And in the midst of it I +caught the familiar tawny look which occasionally comes into my +man-child's eyes. It's the look of dreaming, the look of brooding +wildness where some unknown Celtic great-great-grandfather of a +great-great-grandfather stirs in his moorland grave like a collie-dog +in his afternoon sleep. And it all arose out of nothing more than a +blind beggar sitting on an upturned nail-keg at the edge of the +sidewalk and rather miraculously playing a mouth-organ and a guitar at +one and the same time. The guitar was a dog-eared old instrument that +had most decidedly seen better days, stained and bruised and +greasy-looking along the shank. The mouth-organ was held in position +by two wires that went about the beggar's neck, to leave his hands +free for strumming on the larger instrument. The music he made was +simple enough, rudimentary old waltz-tunes and plaintive old airs that +I hadn't heard for years. But I could see it go straight to the head +of my boy. His intent young face took on the fierce emptiness of a +Barres lion overlooking some time-worn desert. He forgot me, and he +forgot the shopping that had kept him awake about half the night, and +he forgot Buckhorn and the fact that he was a small boy on the streets +of a bald little prairie town. He was thousands of years and thousands +of miles away from me. He was a king's son in Babylon, commanding the +court-musicians to make sweet discourse for him. He was Saul +harkening to David. He was a dreamy-eyed Pict listening to music +wafted at dusk from a Roman camp about which helmeted sentries paced. +He was a medieval prince, falsely imprisoned, leaning from dark and +lonely towers to catch the strains of some wandering troubadour from +his native Southlands. He was a Magyar chieftain listening to the +mountain-side music of valleyed goat-herders with a touch of madness +to it. It engulfed him and entranced him and awoke ancestral tom-toms +in his blood. And I waited beside him until the afternoon sunlight +grew thinner and paler and my legs grew tired, for I knew that his +hungry little soul was being fed. His eye met mine, when it was all +over, but he had nothing to say. I could see, however, that he had +been stirred to the depths,--and by a tin mouth-organ and a +greasy-sided guitar! + +To-night I found Dinkie poring over the pictures in my Knight edition +of Shakespeare. He seemed especially impressed, as I stopped and +looked over his shoulder, by a steel engraving of Gérôme's _Death of +Cæsar_, where the murdered emperor lies stretched out on the floor of +the Forum, now all but empty, with the last of the Senators crowding +out through the door. Two of the senatorial chairs are overturned, +and Cæsar's throne lies face-down on the dais steps. So Dinkie began +asking questions about a drama which he could not quite comprehend. +But they were as nothing to the questions he asked when he turned to +another of the Gérôme pictures, this one being the familiar old +_Cleopatra and Cæsar_. He wanted to know why the lady hadn't more +clothes on, and why the big black man was hiding down behind her, and +what Cæsar was writing a letter for, and why he was looking at the +lady the way he did. So, glancing about to make sure that Dinky-Dunk +was within ear-shot, I did my best to explain the situation to little +Dinkie. + +"Cæsar, my son, was a man who set out in the world to be a great +conqueror. But when he got quite bald, as you may see by the picture, +and had reached middle age, he forgot about being a great conqueror. +He even forgot about being so comfortably middle-aged and that it was +not easy for a man of his years to tumble gracefully into love, for +those romantic impulses, my son, are associated more with +irresponsible youth and are apt to be called by rather an ugly name +when they occur in advanced years. But Cæsar fell in love with the +lady you see in the picture, whose name was Cleopatra and who was one +of the greatest man-eaters that ever came out of Egypt. She had a +weakness for big strong men, and although certain authorities have +claimed that she was a small and hairy person with a very uncertain +temper, she undoubtedly set a very good table and made her gentlemen +friends very comfortable, for Cæsar stayed feasting and forgetting +himself for nearly a year with her. It must have been very pleasant, +for Cæsar loved power, and intended to be one of the big men of his +time. But the lady also loved power, and was undoubtedly glad to see +that she could make Cæsar forget about going home, though it was too +bad that he forgot, for always, even after he had lived to write about +all the great things he had done in the world, people remembered more +about his rather absurd infatuation for the lady than about all the +battles he had won and all the prizes he had captured. And the lady, +of course----" + +But I was interrupted at this point. And it was by Dinky-Dunk. + +"Oh, hell!" he said as he flung down his paper and strode out into the +other room. And those exits, I remembered, were getting to be a bit of +a habit with my harried old Diddums. + + + + +_Sunday the Fifth_ + + +The Day of Rest seems to be the only day left to me now for my +writing. There are no idlers in the neighborhood of Casa Grande. The +days are becoming incredibly long, but they still seem over-short for +all there is to do. The men are much too busy on the land to give +material thought to any thing so womanish as a kitchen-garden. So I +have my own garden to see to. And sometimes I work there until I'm +almost ready to drop. On a couple of nights, recently, when it came +watering-time, even these endless evenings had slipped into such +darkness that I could scarcely see the plants I was so laboriously +irrigating by hand. It wasn't until the water turned the soil black +that the growing green stood pallidly out against the mothering dark +earth.... But it is delightful work. I really love it. And I love to +see things growing. After the bringing up of a family, the bringing up +of a garden surely comes next. + +Yet too much work, I find, can make tempers a trifle short. I spoke +rather sharply to Dinky-Dunk yesterday regarding the folly of leaving +firearms about the house where children can reach them. And he was +equally snappy as he flung his ugly old Colt in its ugly old holster +up over the top corner of our book-cabinet. So, to get even with him, +when Dinkie came in with some sort of wide-petaled field-flower and +asked if I didn't want my fortune told, I announced I rather fancied +it was pretty well told already.... Scotty, by the way, now follows +Dinkie to school and waits outside and comes loping home with him +again. And my two bairns have a new and highly poetic occupation. It +is that of patiently garnering youthful potato-bugs and squashing the +accumulated harvest between two bricks. + + + + +_Sunday the Twelth_ + + +I have been examining Gershom with a more interested eye. And when he +changed color, under that inspection, I apologized for making him +blush. And as that only added to his embarrassment, I artlessly asked +him what a blush really was. That, of course, was throwing the rabbit +straight back into the brier-patch, as far as Gershom was concerned. +For he promptly and meticulously informed me that a blush was a +miniature epilepsy, a vasomotor impulse leading to the dilation or +constriction of the facial blood-vessels, some psychologists even +claiming the blush to be a vestigial survival of the prehistoric +flight-effort of the heart, coming from the era of marriage by +capture, when to be openly admired meant imminent danger. + +"That isn't a bit pretty," I told Gershom. "It's as horrid as what my +husband said about handshaking originating in man's desire to be dead +sure his gentleman friend didn't have a knife up his sleeve, for use +before the greeting was over. It would have been so much nicer, +Gershom, if you could have told me that the first blush was born on +the same day as the first kiss." + +"Kissing," that youth solemnly informed me, "was quite unknown to +primitive man. It evolved, in fact, out of the entirely +self-protective practice of smelling, to determine the health of a +prospective mate, though this in turn evolved into the ceremonial +habit of the rubbing together of noses, which is still the form of +affectionate salutation largely prevalent among the natives of the +South Sea Islands." + +"What a perfectly horrible origin for such a heavenly pastime," I just +as solemnly announced to Gershom, who studied me with a stern and +guarded eye, and having partaken of his eleventh flap-jack, escaped to +the stable and the matutinal task of harnessing Calamity Kate. + + + + +_Sunday the Second_ + + +Summer is here, in earnest, and the last few days have been hot and +windless. School is over, for the next eight weeks, and I shall have +my kiddies close beside me. Gershom, after a ten-day trip down to +Minneapolis for books and clothes, is going to come back to Casa +Grande and help Dinky-Dunk on the land, as long as the holidays last. +He thinks it will build him up a bit. He is also solemnly anxious to +study music. He feels it would round out his accomplishments, which, +he acknowledged, have threatened to become overwhelmingly scientific. +So I'm to give Gershom music lessons in exchange for his tutoring +Dinkie. They will be rather awful, I'm afraid, for Gershom has about +as much music in his honest old soul as Calamity Kate. I may not teach +him much. But all the time, I know, I will be learning a great deal +from Gershom. He informed me, last night, that he had carefully +computed that the Bible mentioned nineteen different precious stones, +one hundred and four trees or plants, six metals, thirty-five +animals, thirty-nine birds, six fishes, twenty insects, and eleven +reptiles. + +As I've already said, summer is here. But it doesn't seem to mean as +much to me as it used to, for my interests have been taken away from +the land and more and more walled up about my family. Dinky-Dunk's +grain, however, has come along satisfactorily, and there is every +promise of a good crop. Yet this entirely fails to elate my husband. +Every small mischance is a sort of music-cue nowadays to start him +singing about the monotony of prairie-life. Ranching, he protests, +isn't the easy game it used to be, now that cattle can't be fattened +on the open range and now that wheat itself is so much lower in price. +One has to work for one's money, and watch every dollar. And my +Diddums keeps railing about the government doing so little for the +farmer and driving the men off the land into the cities. He has fallen +into the habit of protesting he can see nothing much in life as a +back-township hay-tosser and that all the big chances are now in the +big centers. I had been hoping that this was a new form of +spring-fever which would eventually work its way out of his system. +But I can see now that the matter is something more mental than +physical. He hasn't lost his strength, but he has lost his driving +power. He is healthy enough, Heaven knows. Indeed, he impresses me as +being a bit too much that way, for he has quite lost his old-time lean +and hungry look and betrays a tendency to take on a ventral contour +unmistakably aldermanic. He may be heavy, but he is hard-muscled and +brown as an old meerschaum. There is a canker, however, somewhere +about the core of his heart. And I can see him more clearly than I +used to. He is a strong man, but he is a strong man without +earnestness. And being such, I vaguely apprehend in him some splendid +failure. For the wings that soar to success in this world are plumed +with faith and feathered with conviction. + +It did not surprise me this morning when Dinky-Dunk announced that he +felt a trifle stale and suggested that the family take a holiday on +Tuesday and trek out to Dead-Horse Lake for the day. We're to hitch +Tumble-Weed and Tithonus to the old prairie-schooner--for we'll be +taking side-trails where no car could venture--and pike off for a +whole blessed day of care-free picnicking. So to-morrow Struthers and +I will be solemnly busy in the kitchen concocting suitable dishes to +be taken along in the old grub-box, and when that is over we'll patch +together something in the form of bathing-suits, for there'll be a +chance for a dip in the slough-water, and our kiddies have arrived at +an age imposing fit and proper apparel on their sadly pagan but +chastened parents. + + + + +_Wednesday the Fifth_ + + +We have had our day at Dead-Horse Lake, but it wasn't the happy event +I had anticipated. Worldly happiness, I begin to feel, usually dies +a-borning: it makes me think of wistaria-bloom, for invariably one end +is withering away before the other end is even in flower. At any rate, +we were off early, the weather was perfect, and the sky was an +inverted tureen of lazulite blue. Dinkie drove the team part of the +way, his dad smoked beside him up on the big driving-seat, and I +raised my voice in song until Pauline Augusta fell asleep and had to +be bedded down in the wagon-straw and covered with a blanket. + +Dead-Horse Lake is really a slough, dolorously named because a near-by +rancher once lost eight horses therein, the foolish animals wandering +out on ice that was too thin to hold them up. + +We were hungry by the time we had hobbled out our teams and gathered +wood and made a fire. And after dinner Dinky-Dunk fell asleep and the +children and I tried to weave a willow basket, which wasn't a +success. Poppsy, in fact, cut her finger with her pater's pocket-knife +and because of this physical disability declined to don her +bathing-suit when we made ready for the water. + +The slough-water was enticingly warm, under the hot July sun, and we +ventured in at the west end where a firmer lip of sand and alkali gave +us footing. And I enjoyed the swim, although Dinky-Dunk made fun of my +improvised bathing-suit. It seemed like old times, to bask lazily in +the sun and float about on my back with my fingers linked under my +head. My lord and master even acknowledged that my figure wasn't so +bad as he had expected, in a lady of my years. I splashed him for +that, and he dove for my ankles, and nearly drowned me before I could +get away. + +It was all light-hearted enough, until Dinky-Dunk happened to notice +that Dinkie wasn't enjoying the water as an able-bodied youngster +ought. The child, in fact, was afraid of it--which was only natural, +remembering what a land-bird he had been all his life. His father, +apparently, decided to carry him out and give him a swimming-lesson. + +I was on shore by this time, trying to sun out my sodden mop of hair, +which I had fondly imagined I could keep dry. I heard Dinkie's cry as +his father captured him, and I called out to Dinky-Dunk, through my +combed out tresses, to have a heart. + +Dinky-Dunk called back that the Indian way, after all, was the only +way to teach a youngster. I didn't give much thought to the matter +until the two of them were out in deeper water and I heard Dinkie's +scream of stark terror. It came home to me then that the Indian method +in such things was to toss the child into deep water and leave him +there to struggle for his life. + +Dinky-Dunk, I suppose, hadn't intended to do quite that. But the boy +was naturally terrified at being carried out beyond his depth, and +when I looked up I could see his bony little body struggling to free +itself. That timidity, I take it, angered the boy's father. And he +intended to cure it. He was doing his best, in fact, to fling the +clutching and clawing little body away from him when I heard those +repeated short screams of horror and promptly took a hand in the +matter. Something snapped in my skull, and I saw red. I hated my +husband for what he was doing. I hated him for the mere thought that +he could do it. And I hated him for calling out that this was what +people got by mollycoddling their children. + +But that didn't stop me. I made for Dinky-Dunk like a hundred-weight +of wildcats. I went through the water like a hell-diver, and without +quite knowing what I was doing I got hold of him and tried to garrote +him. I don't remember what I said, but I have a hazy idea it was not +the most ladylike of language. He stared at me, as I tore Dinkie away +from him, stared at me with a hard and slightly incredulous eye. For +I'm afraid I was ready to fight with my teeth and nails, if need be, +and I suppose my expression wasn't altogether angelic. We were both +shaking, at any rate, when we got back to dry land. Dinky-Dunk stood +staring at us, for a silent moment or two, with a look of black +disgust on his wet face. I'm even afraid it was something more than +disgust. Then he strode away and proceeded to dress on the other side +of the prairie-schooner, without so much as a second look at us. And +then he went off for the horses, absenting himself a quite unnecessary +length of time. But I took advantage of that to have a talk with +Dinkie. + +"Dinkie," I said, "you and I are going to walk out into that water, +and this time you're not going to be afraid!" + +I could see his eye searching mine, although he did not speak. + +I put one hand on the wet tangle of his hair. + +"Will you come?" I asked him. + +He took a deep breath. Then he looked at the slough-water. Then he +looked back into my eyes. + +"Yes," he said, though I noticed his lips were not so red as usual. + +So side by side and hand in hand the two of us walked out into +Dead-Horse Lake. His eyes questioned me, once, as the water came up +about his armpits. But he shut his teeth tight and made no effort to +draw back. I could see the involuntary spasms of his chest as that +terrifying flood closed in about his little body, yet he was ready +enough to show me he wasn't a coward. And when I saw that he had met +and faced his ordeal I turned him about and led him quietly back to +land. We were both prouder and happier for what had just happened. We +didn't even need to talk about it, for each knew that the other +understood. What still disturbs me, though, is something not in my +boy's make-up, but in my own. During the long and silent drive home I +noticed a mark on my husband's neck. And I was the termagant who must +have put it there, though I have no memory of doing so. But from it I +realize that I haven't the control over myself every civilized and +self-respecting woman should have. I begin to see that I can't +altogether trust myself where my female-of-the-species affections are +involved. I'm no better, I'm afraid, than the Bengal tigress which +Dinky-Dunk once intimated I was, the Bengal tigress who will battle so +unreasoningly for her offspring. It may be natural in mothers, whether +they wear fur or feathers or lisle-thread stockings--but it worries +me. I was an engine running wild. And when you run wild you are apt to +run into catastrophe. + + + + +_Friday the Seventh_ + + +Dinky-Dunk is on his dignity. He has put a fence around himself to +keep me at a distance, the same as he puts a fence around his +haystacks to keep off the cattle. We are coolly polite to each other, +but that is as far as it goes. There is something radically wrong with +this home, as a home, but I seem helpless to put the matter right. +It's about all I have left, in this life of mine, but I'm in some way +failing in my duty as a house-wife. "Home" is a beautiful word, and +home-life should be beautiful. Any sacrifice and any concession a +woman is willing to make to keep that home, and to keep ugliness out +of it, ought to be well considered by the judge of her final +destinies. I'm ready to do my part, but I don't know where to begin. +I'm depressed by a teasing sense of frustration, not quite tangible +enough to fight, like cobwebs across your face. It's not easy to carry +around the milk of human kindness after they've pretty well kicked the +bottom out of your can! + +Torrid and tiring are these almost endless summer days. But it's what +the grain needs, and who am I to look this gift-horse of heat in the +face. Yet there are two things, I must confess, in which the prairie +is sadly lacking. One is trees; and the other is shade, the cool green +sun-filtering shade of woodlands where birds can sing and mossy little +brooks can babble. I've been longing all day for just an hour up in an +English cherry tree, with the pectoral smell of the leaves against my +face and the chance of eating at least half my own weight of fresh +fruit. But even in the matter of its treelessness, I'm told, the +prairie is reforming. There are men living who remember when there +were no trees west of Brandon, except in the coulées and the +river-bottoms. Now that fire no longer runs wild, however, the trees +are creeping in, mile by mile and season by season. Already the +eastern line of natural bush country reaches to about ten miles from +Regina two hundred miles west. Oxbow and Estevan, Dinky-Dunk once told +me, had no trees whatever when first settled, though much of that +country now has a comfortable array of bluffs. And forestry, of +course, is giving nature a friendly push along, in the matter. In the +meantime, we have to accommodate ourselves to the conditions that +prevail, just as the birds of the air must do. Here the haughty crow +of the east is compelled to nest in the low willows of the coulée and +raise its young within hand-reach of mother earth. Like our women, it +can enjoy very little privacy of family life. The only thing that +saves us and the crows, I suppose, is that the men-folks of this +country are too preoccupied with their own ends to go around +bird-nesting. They are too busy to break up homes, either in +willow-tops or women's hearts.... I ought to be satisfied. But I've +been dogged, this last day or two, by a longing to be scudding in a +single-sticker off Orienta Point again or to motor-cruise once more +along the Sound in a smother of spray. + + + + +_Thursday the Thirteenth_ + + +Dinky-Dunk has been called to Calgary on business. It sounds simple +enough, in these Unpretentious Annals of an Unloved Worm, but I can't +help feeling that it marks a trivially significant divide in the trend +of things. It depresses me more than I can explain. My depression, I +imagine, comes mostly from the manner in which Duncan went. He was +matter-of-fact enough about it all, but I can't get rid of the +impression that he went with a feeling very much like relief. His +manner, at any rate, was not one to invite cross-examination, and he +insisted, to the end, on regarding his departure as an every-day +incident in the life of a preoccupied rancher. So I caught my cue from +him, and was as quiet about it all as he could have wished. But under +the crust was the volcano.... + +The trouble with the tragedies of real life is that they are never +clear-cut. It takes art to weave a selvage about them or fit them into +a frame. But in reality they're as ragged and nebulous as +wind-clouds. The days drag on into weeks, and the weeks into months, +and life on the surface seems to be running on, the same as before. +There's the same superficial play of all the superficial old forces, +but in the depths are dangers and uglinesses and sullen bombs of +emotional TNT we daren't even touch! + +Heigho! I nearly forgot my _sursum-corda_ rôle. And didn't old Doctor +Johnson say that peevishness was the vice of narrow minds? So here's +where we tighten up the belt a bit. But we humans, who come into the +world alone, and go out of it alone, are always hungering for +companionship which we can't quite find. Our souls are islands, with a +coral-reef of reserve built up about them. Last night, when I was +patching some of Gershom's undies for him, I wickedly worked an +arrow-pierced heart, in red yarn, on one leg of his B.V.D.'s. This +morning, I noticed, his eye evaded mine and there was marked +constraint in his manner. I even begin to detect unmistakable signs of +nervousness in him when we happen to be alone together. And during his +last music lesson there was a _vibrata_ of emotion in his voice which +made me think of an April frog in a slough-end. + +Even my little Dinkie, day before yesterday, asked me if I'd mind not +bathing him any more. He explained that he thought he could manage +very nicely by himself now. It seemed trivial enough, and yet, in a +way, it was momentous. I am to be denied the luxury of tubbing my own +child. I, who always loved even the smell of that earthy and +soil-grubbing young body, who could love it when it wasn't any too +clean and could glory in its musky and animal-like odors as well as +the satin-shine of the light on its well-soaped little ribs, must now +stand aside before the reservations of sex. It makes me feel that I've +reached still another divide on the continent of motherhood. + +This afternoon, when I wandered into the study, I observed Dinkie +stooping over a Chesterfield pillow with his right hand upraised in a +perplexingly dramatic manner. He turned scarlet when he saw me +standing there watching him. But the question in my eyes did not +escape him. + +"I was pr'tendin' to be King Arthur when he found out Guinevere was in +love with Launcelot," he rather lamely explained as he walked away to +the window and stood staring out over the prairie. But for the life of +me I can't understand what should have turned his thoughts into that +particular channel of romance. Those are matters with which the young +and the innocent should have nothing to do. They are matters, in fact, +which it behooves even the old and the wary to eschew. + + + + +_Sunday the Sixteenth_ + + +It seems strange, in such golden summer weather, that every man and +woman and child on this sunbathed footstool of God shouldn't be sanely +and supremely happy.... My husband, I am glad to say, is once more +back in his home. And I have been realizing, the last few days, that +home is an empty and foolish place without its man about. It's a ship +without a captain, a clan without a chief. Yet I found it both +depressing and humbling to be brought once more face to face with that +particular fact. + +Dinky-Dunk, on the other hand, has come back with both an odd sense of +elation and an odd sense of estrangement. He has taken on a vague +something which I find it impossible to define. He is blither and at +the same time he is more solemnly abstracted. And he protests that his +journey was a success. + +"I'm going to ride two horses, from now on," he announced to me this +morning. "I've got my chance and I'm going to grab it. I've swapped +my Buckhorn lots for some inside Calgary stuff and I'm lumping +everything that's left of my Coast deal for a third-interest in those +Barcona coal-fields. There's a quarter of a million waiting there for +the people with money enough to swing it. And I'm going to edge in +while it's still open." + +"But is it possible to ride two horses?" I asked, waywardly depressed +by all this new-found optimism. + +"It's _got_ to be possible, until we find out which horse is the +better traveler," announced Dinky-Dunk. Then he added, without caring +to meet my eye: "And I can't say I see much promise of action out of +this particular end of the team." + +I must have flamed red, at that speech, for I thought at the moment he +was referring to me. It was only after I'd turned the thing over in my +mind, as I helped Struthers put together our new butter-worker, that I +saw he really referred to Casa Grande. But my husband knows I will +never part with this ranch. He will never be so foolish as to ask me +to do that. Yet one thing is plain. His heart is no longer here. He +will stick to this prairie farm of ours only for what he can get out +of it. + +Dinkie warmed the cockles of my heart by telling me this afternoon +when we were out salting the horses that he never wanted to go away +from Casa Grande and his mummy. The child, I imagine, had overheard +some of this morning's talk. He put his arm around my knees and hugged +me tight. And I could see the tawny look come into his hazel eyes +speckled with brown. My Dinkie is a prairie child. His soul is not a +cramped little soul, but has depth and wideness and undiscerned +mysteries. + + + + +_Sunday the Thirtieth_ + + +Two weeks have slipped by. Two weeks have gone, and left no record of +their going. But a prairie home is a terribly busy one, at times, and +it's idleness that leads to the ink-pot. I'm still trying to make the +best of a none too promising situation, and I'll thole through, as +Whinstane Sandy puts it. After breakfast this morning, in fact, when +Pauline Augusta was swept by one of those little gales of lonesomeness +to which children and women are so mysteriously subjected, she climbed +up into my lap and I rocked her on my shoulder as I might have rocked +a baby. Dinky-Dunk wandered in and inspected that performance with a +slightly satiric eye. So, resenting his expression, I promptly began +to sing: + + "Bye-bye, Baby Bunting, + Daddy's gone a-hunting, + To gather up a pile of tin + To wrap the Baby Bunting in!" + +Dinky-Dunk, when the significance of this lilted flippancy of mine +had sunk home, regarded me with a narrowed and none too friendly eye. + +"Feeling a bit larkier than usual this morning, aren't you?" he +inquired with what was merely a pretense at carelessness. + +It was merely a pretense, I know, because we'd been over the old +ground the night before, and the excursion hadn't added greatly to the +happiness of either of us. Duncan, in fact, had rather horrified me by +actually asking if I thought there was a chance of his borrowing +eleven thousand dollars from Peter Ketley. + +"We can't all trade on that man's generosity!" I cried, without giving +much thought to the manner in which I was expressing myself. + +"Oh, _that's_ the way you feel about it!" retorted my husband. And I +could see his face harden into Scotch granite. I could also see the +look of perplexity in my small son's eyes as he stood studying his +father. + +"Is there anything abnormal in my feeling the way I do?" I parried, +resenting the beetling brow of the Dour Man. + +"Not if you regard him as your personal and particular fairy +god-father," retorted my husband. + +"I've no more reason for regarding him as that," I said as calmly as +I could, "than I have for regarding him as a professional +money-lender." + +Duncan must have seen from my face that it would be dangerous to go +much further. So he merely shrugged a flippant shoulder. + +"They tell me he's got more money than he knows what to do with," he +said with a heavy jocularity which couldn't quite rise. + +"Then lightening his burdens is a form of charity we can scarcely +afford to indulge in," I none too graciously remarked. And I saw my +husband's face harden again. + +"Well, I've got to have ready money and I've got to have it before the +year's out," was his retort. He told me, when the air had cleared a +little, that he'd have to open an office in Calgary as soon as +harvesting was over. There was already too much at stake to take +chances. Then he asked me if there were any circumstances under which +I'd be willing to sell Casa Grande. And I told him, quite promptly and +quite definitely, that there was none. + +"Then how about the old Harris Ranch?" he finally inquired. + +"But why should we sell that?" I asked. Alabama Ranch, I knew, was in +my name, and I had always regarded it as a sort of nest-egg for the +children. It was something put by for a rainy day, something to fall +back on, if ill-luck ever overtook us again. + +"Because I can double and treble every dollar we get out of it, inside +of a year," averred Dinky-Dunk. + +"But how am I to know that?" I contended, hating to seem hard and +selfish and narrow in the teeth of an ambitious man's enterprise. + +"You'd have to take my word for it," retorted my husband. + +"But we've more than ourselves to consider," I contended, knowing he'd +merely scoff at that harping on the old string of the children. + +"That's why I intend to get out of this rut!" he cried with unexpected +bitterness. And a few minutes later he made the suggestion that he'd +deed Casa Grande entirely over to me if I'd consent to the sale of +Alabama Ranch and give him a chance to swing the bigger plans he +intended to swing. + +The suggestion rather took my breath away. My rustic soul, I suppose, +is stupidly averse to change. But I realize that when you travel in +double-harness you can't forever pull back on your team-mate. So I've +asked Dinky-Dunk to give me a few days to think the thing over. + + + + +_Wednesday the Second_ + + +Casa Grande has had an invasion of visitors. It was precious old Percy +and his Olga who blew in on us, after being swallowed up by the Big +Silence for almost four long years. They came without warning, which +is the free and easy way of the westerner, appearing in a +mud-splattered and dust-covered Ford that had carried them blithely +over two hundred and thirty miles of prairie trails. And with them +they brought a quartet of rampageous young buckaroos who promptly +turned our sedate homestead into a rodeo. + +Percy himself is browner and stouter and more rubicund than I might +have expected, with just a sprinkling of gray under his lopsided +Stetson to announce that Time hasn't been standing still for any of +us. But one would never have taken him for an ex-lunger. And there is +a wholesomeness about the man, for all his quietness, which draws one +to him. Olga herself still again impressed me as a Zorn etching come +to life, as a Norse myth in petticoats, with the same old largeness of +limb and the same old suggestion of sky-line vastnesses about her. She +still looks as though the Lord had made her when the world was young +and the women of Homer did their spinning in the sunlight. Some +earlier touch of morning freshness is gone from her, it's true, for +you can't move about with four little toddlers in your wake and still +suggest the budding vine. But that morning freshness has been +supplanted by a full and mellow noonday contentedness which is not +without its placid appeal. To her husband, at any rate, she seems +mysteriously perfect. He can still sit and stare at her with a +startlingly uxorious eye. And she, in turn, bathes him in that pale +lunar stare of meditative approval which says plainer than words just +how much her "man" means to her. + +Percy and his family stayed overnight with us and hit the trail again +yesterday morning. An old friend of Percy's from Brasenose has taken a +parish some forty odd miles south of Buckhorn--a parish, by the way, +which ought to shake a little of the Oxford dreaminess out of his +system--and Olga and her husband are "packing" their newly-arrived +Toddler Number Four down to the new curate to have him christened. + +We were all a bit shy and constrained, during our first hour together +but this soon wore away. It wasn't long before Olga's offspring and +mine were fraternizing together, over-running the bathroom tub and +emptying our water-tank, and making a concerted attack on one of +Dinky-Dunk's self-binders, which would have been dismantled in short +order, if Percy hadn't gone out to investigate the cause of the sudden +quiet. + +"My boy loves everything with wheels," explained the proud Olga, in +extenuation of her Junior's oil-blackened fingers. + +That brought me up short, for I was on the point of making the same +statement about my Dinkie. After thinking it over, in fact, I realized +that _every_ normal boy loves everything with wheels. And it began to +dawn on me that there was nothing so extraordinary, after all, in my +son's fondness for machinery. I began to see that he was merely one of +a very wide-spread clan, when, an hour later, the entire excited six +united in playing Indian about the haystacks, and kept it up until +even the docile Pauline Augusta was driven to revolt against so +persistently being the Pale-face captive. She announced that she was +tired of being scalped. So, for variety's sake, the boys turned to +riding and roping and hog-tying one another like the true little +westerners they were, and many an imaginary brand was planted on many +a bleating set of ribs. + +But now they are gone, and I've been thinking a great deal about Olga. +I fancy I have even been envying her a little. She's of that annealing +softness which can rivet and hold a family together. I've even been +trying to solace myself with the claim that she's a trifle ox-like in +her make-up. But that is not being just to Olga. She makes a perfect +wife. She is as tranquil-minded as summer moonlight on a convent-roof. +She is as soft-spoken as a wind-harp swinging in an abbey door. She +surrenders to the will of her husband and neither frets nor questions +nor walks with discontent. I suppose she has a will of her own, packed +somewhere away in that benignant big body of hers, but she never +obtrudes it. She placidly awaits her time, as the bosom of the prairie +awaits its harvesting. And I've been wondering if that really isn't +the best type of woman for married life, the autumnally contented and +pensively quiet woman who can remain unruffled by man and his +meanderings. + +I wasn't built according to that plan, and I suppose I've had to pay +for it. I've just about concluded, in fact, that I would have been a +hard nut for any man to crack. I've never been conspicuous for my +efforts at self-obliteration. I've a temper that's as brittle as a +squirrel bone. I'm too febrile and flightly, too chameleon-mooded and +critical. The modern wife should be always a conservative. She should +hold back her husband's impulses of nervous expenditure, conserving +his tranquil-mindedness about the same as cotton-waste in a +journal-box conserves oil. Heaven knows I started with theories +enough--but I must be a good deal like old Schramm, that teacher of +Heine's who was so busy inditing a study of Universal Peace that his +boys had all the chance they could wish for pummeling one another. But +I've been thinking, Reuben. And I'm going to see if I can't save +what's left of the ship. I'm no Renaissance cherub on a cloudlet, but +I'm going to knuckle down and see if I can't jibe along a little +better with my old Dinky-Dunk. I've decided to back off and give him +his chance. If he's set on selling Alabama Ranch, on the terms he's +mentioned, I'm not going to object. He's determined to make money, to +advance. And I don't want to see him accusing me of lying down in the +shafts!... What is more, I'm going out in the fields, when the push is +on, to help stook the wheat. That may wear me down and make me a +little more like Olga. + + + + +_Thursday the Tenth_ + + +It's difficult to be a woman, as the over-sensitive Jean Christophe +once remarked. Men are without those confounding emotions which women +seem to be both cursed with and blessed with. When I announced to +Dinky-Dunk my willingness to part with Alabama Ranch, he took it quite +as a matter of course. He betrayed no tendency to praise me for my +sacrifices, for my willingness to surrender to strangers the land +which had once been our home, the acres on which we'd once been happy +and heavy-hearted. He merely remarked that under the circumstances it +seemed the most sensible thing to do. There's a one-horse lawyer in +Buckhorn who has been asking about the Harris Ranch and Dinky-Dunk +says he suspects this inquiring one has a client up his sleeve. + +What I had looked forward to as a talk which might possibly beat down +a few of the barriers of reserve between us proved a bit of a +disappointment. My husband refused to accept me as a heroine. And on +his way out, as ill-luck would have it, he stopped to observe Pauline +Augusta struggling over a letter to her "Uncle Peter." It was a maiden +effort along that line and she was dictating her messages to Dinkie, +who, in turn, was laboriously and carefully inscribing them on my +writing-pad, with a nose and a sympathetically working tongue not more +than ten inches away from the paper. Pauline Augusta, in fact, had +just proclaimed to her amanuensis that "we had a geese for dinner +to-day" when her father stopped to size up the situation. + +"To whom are you describing the home circle?" questioned Pauline +Augusta's parent, with an intonation that didn't escape me. + +"It's a letter to Uncle Peter," explained Dinkie's little sister. And +I could see Duncan's face harden. + +"It's funny my whole family should fall for that damned Quaker!" were +the words he flung over his shoulder at me as he walked out of the +room. + + + + +_Tuesday the Fifth_ + + +School has started again. And it's a solemn business, this matter of +planting wisdom in little prairie heads. Dinky-Dunk, who has been up +to his ears in haying and is now watching his grain with a nervous +eye, remarked that our offspring would be once more mingling with +Mennonites and Swedes and Galicians and Ukrainians. I resented that +speech, though I said nothing in reply to it. But I decided to +investigate Gershom's school. + +So yesterday afternoon I drove over in the car. I had a blow-out on +the way, a blow-out which I had to patch up with my own hands, so I +arrived too late to inspect Gershom conducting his classes. It was +almost four, in fact, before I got there, so I pulled up beside the +school-gate and sat waiting for the children to come out. And as I sat +there in the car-seat, under a sky of unimaginable blue, with the +prairie wind whipping my face, I couldn't help studying that bald +little temple of learning which stood out so clear-cut in the sharp +northern sunlight. It was a plain little frame building set in one +corner of a rancher's half-section, an acre of land marked off by a +wire fence where the two trails crossed, the two long trails that +melted away in the interminable distance. It seemed a lonely little +house of scholarship, with its playground worn so bare that even two +months of idleness had given scant harborage for the seeds that wind +and bird must have brought there. But as I stared at it it seemed to +take on a dignity all its own, the dignity of a fixed and far-off +purpose. It was the nest of a nation's greatness. It was the outpost +of civilization. It was the advance-guard of pioneering man, driving +the wilderness deeper and deeper into the North. It was life preparing +wistfully for the future. + +From it I heard a sudden shrill chorus of voices and the clatter of +feet, and I knew that the day's work was over. I saw the children +emerge, like bees out of a beehive, and loneliness no longer reigned +over that bald yard in the betraying northern sunlight. Yet they were +not riotous, those children confronting the wine-like air of the open. +They were more subdued than I had looked for, since I could only too +easily remember one of my earlier calls for Dinkie at noon, when I +found the entire class turned out and riding a rancher's pig, a heavy +brood-sow that had in some luckless moment wandered into the +school-yard and had been chased and raced until it was too weary to +resent a young barbarian mounting its broad back and riding thereon, +to the shouts of the other boys and the shrill cries of the girls. But +now, from my car-seat, I could see Gershom surrounded by a +multi-colored group of little figures, as he stopped to fix a +strap-buckle on the school-bag of one of his pupils. And as he stood +there in the slanting afternoon sunlight surrounded by his charges he +suddenly made me think of the tall old priest in Sorolla's _Triste +Herencia_ surrounded by his waifs. I caught the echo of something +benignant and Lincoln-like from that raw-boned figure in the +big-lensed eye-glasses and the clothes that didn't quite fit him. And +my respect for Gershom went up like a Chinook-fanned thermometer. He +took those children of his seriously. He liked them. He was trying to +give them the best that was in him. And that solemn purpose saved him, +redeemed him, ennobled his baldness just as it ennobled the baldness +of the four-square little frame building behind him. I don't know why +it was, but for some reason or other that picture of the northern +prairie and the gaunt school-teacher surrounded by his pupils in the +thinning afternoon sunlight became memorable to me. It photographed +itself on my mind, not sharply, but softened with a fringing prism of +feeling, like a picture taken with what camera-men call a +"soft-focus." It touched my heart, in some way, and threatened to +bring a choke up into my foolish old throat. + +It was Pauline Augusta who saw me first. She came toward the car with +her strapped school-books and her lunch-box in her hand and a prim +little smile on her slightly freckled face. She impressed me as a +startingly shabby figure, in the old sealskin coat which I had made +over for her, worn clean to the hide along the front, for even those +early autumn days found a chill in the air when the sun began to get +low. She had just climbed in beside me when I caught sight of Dinkie. +I saw him come down the school-steps, stuffing something into the +pocket of his reefer-jacket as he came. He looked startlingly tall, +for a boy of his years. He seemed deep in thought. There was, indeed, +an air of remoteness about him which for a moment rather startled me, +an air of belonging, not to me, but to the world into which he was +peering with such ardent young eyes. Then he caught sight of me, and +at the same moment his face both lightened and brightened. He came +toward the car quietly, none the less, and with that slightly sidewise +twist of the body which overtakes him in his occasional moments of +embarrassment, for it was plain that he stood averse to any undue +display of emotion before his playmates. He merely said, "Hello, +Mummy" and smiled awkwardly. But after he had climbed up into the car +and wormed down between Pauline Augusta and me, and after I had tucked +the old bear-robe about them and called out to Gershom that I'd carry +my kiddies home, I could feel Dinkie's arm push shyly in behind my +back and work its way as far around my waist as it was able to reach. +He didn't speak. But his solemn little face gazed up at me, with its +habitual hungry look, and I could see the hazel specks in the brown +iris of the upturned eye as the arm tightened its hold on me. It made +me ridiculously happy. For I knew that my boy loved me. And I love +him. I love him so much that it brings a tapering spear-head of pain +into my heart, and at the very moment I'm so happy I feel a tear just +under the surface. + + + + +_Sunday the Tenth_ + + +I have been reading Peter's latest letter to Dinkie, reading it for +the second time. It is not so frolicsome as many of its fellows, but +it impresses me as typical of its sender. + + "I've to-day told fourteen cents' worth of postage-stamps to carry + out to you, dear Dinkie, a copy of my own _Tales from Homer_, + which may be muddy with a few big words but which the next year or + two will surely see tramped down into easier going. You may not + like it now, but later on, I know, you will like it better. For it + tells of heroes and battles and travels which only a boy can + really understand. It tells of the wanderings and adventures of + strong and simple-hearted men, men who are as scarce, nowadays, as + the shining helmets they used to wear. It tells of women superb + and simple and lovely as goddesses, such as your own prairie might + give birth to, such as your own mother must always seem to us. It + tells of flashing temples and cities of marble overlooking singing + seas of sapphire, of stately ships venturing over dark waters and + landing on unknown islands, of siege and sword-fights and caves + and giants and sea-goddesses and magic songs, and all that + sunnier and simpler life which the world, as a prosaic old + grown-up, has left behind.... + + "But I'm wrong in this, perhaps, for out in the land where you + live there is still largeness and the gold-green ache of wonder + beyond every sky-line. And I can't help envying you, Dinkie, for + being a part of that world which is so much more heroic than mine. + I live where a very shabby line of horse-cars used to run; and you + live where the buffaloes used to run. I hear the rattle of the + ash-cans in the morning; and you hear the song of the wind playing + on the harp of summer. I pay five hundred dollars a year to wander + about a smoky club no bigger than your corral; you wander about a + Big Outdoors that rambles off up to the Arctic Circle itself. And + you open a window at night and see the Aurora Borealis in all its + beauty; and I open mine and observe an electric roof-sign + announcing that Somebody's Tonic will take away my tired feeling. + You put up your blind and see God's footstool bright with dew and + dizzy with distance; I put up mine and overlook a wall of brick + and mortar with one window wherein a fat man shaves himself. And + you can go out in the morning and pick yellow crowfoot and range + lilies; and all we can pick about this place of ours are + milk-bottles and morning-papers packed full of murder and theft + and tax-notices!" + +Much of that letter, I know, was over Dinkie's head. But it carried a +message or two to Dinkie's mother which in some way threw her heart +into high. It was different from the letter that came the week +before, the one arriving two days ahead of Kingsley's _Water Babies_ +with six lines of Hagedorn inscribed on its fly-leaf: + + "And here you are to live, and help us live. + Bend close and listen, bird with folded wings. + Here is life's secret: Keep the upward glance; + Remember Aries is your relative, + The Moon's your uncle, and those twinkling things + Your sisters and your cousins and your aunts!" + +This letter seemed like the Peter Ketley we knew best, the sad-eyed +Peter with the feather of courage in his cap, the Peter who could +caper and make you forget that his heart had ever been heavy. For he +wrote: + + "This time, Dinkie-Boy, I'm going to tell you about the sea. For + the water-tank, as I remember it, is the biggest sea you have at + Casa Grande--unless you count the mud when winter breaks up! And + your prairie, with its long waves of green, is, I suppose, really + a sea that has gone to sleep. But I mean the truly + honest-to-goodness sea which has tides and baby-whales and + steamers and cramps and sea-serpents in it. You saw it once at + Santa Monica, I know, though you may have been too small to + remember. But yesterday, I motored to a place called Atlantic City + where they sell picture post-cards and push you in a wheeled chair + and let you sit on the sand and watch the Water Babies, whom the + policemen send to jail if they so much as walk along the beach + without their stockings on. These Water Babies were not in a + bottle--like the ones you'll read about in the book--but I think + there was a bottle or two in some of them, from the way they + acted. But one of them was in a pickle, for Father Neptune caught + her in his under-tow--which you must not mix up with his + under-toe, something with which only the mermaids are + familiar--and a life-guard had to swim out and bring her in. And a + few minutes after that I saw a real beach-comber. I had read about + them in the South Sea Islands, but had never seen one before. This + one sat under a striped parasol, with a mirror between her knees, + and combed and combed her hair until it was quite dry again. I was + disappointed in her knees, because I was hoping, at first, she + wouldn't have any, but would be a mermaid who had come up on the + sand to sun herself and would have a long and tapering tail + covered with scales like a tarpon's. But all she had was + beach-shoes tied with silk ribbons, and I preferred watching the + water. For when I watch the ocean I always feel like Mr. Hood and + wish I was at least three small boys, so that I could pull off my + three pairs of shoes and stockings and go paddling up to my six + bare knees and let the rollers slap against my three startled + little tummies and have thirty toes to step on the squids and + star-fish with. And when I went back to the board-walk and watched + all the gulls (I don't think I ever saw so many of 'em in one + place at once) I couldn't help thinking it was too bad the Pilgrim + Fathers didn't wait for three centuries and land at a bright and + lively place like this, since it would have made them so much + jollier and fizzier. They'd probably have turned the _Mayflower_ + into a diving-float and we'd never have had any Blue Laws to break + and that curious thing known as The New England Conscience to keep + us from being as happy as we feel we ought to be." + + + + +_Sunday the Twenty-Fourth_ + + +Harvest is on us, and Casa Grande hums like a beehive. There are three +extra "hands" to feed, and Whinnie is going about with a moody eye +because Struthers is directing more attention than necessary toward +one of the smooth-spoken cutthroats now nesting in our bunk-house. His +name is Cuba Sebeck and in times of peace he professes to be a +horse-wrangler. Struthers, intent on showing Whinnie that he is not +the only man in her world, is placidly but patiently showering the +lanky Cuba with a barrage of her fluffiest pastries. She has also +given her hair an extra strong wash of sage-tea, which is Struthers' +pet and particular way of putting on war-paint. Whinnie, I notice, +shuts himself up after supper with that copy of Burns' poems we gave +him last Christmas, morosely exiling himself from all the laughing and +gaming and pow-wowing which takes place in the long cool twilights, +just outside the bunk-house. Cuba undertook to serenade the dour one +by donning certain portions of Struthers' apparel and playing my old +banjo under his window. Whinnie quietly retaliated by emptying his +bath-water on the musician's head--and the language was indescribable. +I have been forced to speak to Dinky-Dunk, in fact, about the men's +profanity before my children. It is something I will not endure. My +husband, on the other hand, refuses to take the matter very seriously. +But I have been keeping a close eye over my kiddies--and woe betide +the horse-wrangler who uses unseemly language within their hearing. So +far they seem to have gone through it unscathed, about the same as a +child can go through the indecorous moments of _The Arabian Nights_, +which stands profoundly wicked to only Arabs and old gentlemen. + + + + +_Wednesday the Twenty-Eighth_ + + +Summer is slipping away. The days are shortening and there have been +light frosts at night, but not enough to hurt Dinky-Dunk's late oats, +which he has been watching with a worried eye. There is a saber-blade +edge to the evening air now and we have been having some glorious +displays of Northern Lights. I can't help feeling that these Merry +Dancers of the Pole, as some one has called them, make up for what the +prairie may lack in diversity. Dusk by dusk they drown our world in +color, they smother our skies in glory. They are terrifying, +sometimes, to the tenderfoot, giving him the feeling that his world is +on fire. Poor old Struthers, during an especially active display, +invariably gets out her Bible. Used to them as I am, I find they can +still touch me with awe. They make me lonesome. They seem like the +search-lights of God, showing up my human littlenesses of soul. They +are Armadas of floating glory reminding me there are seas I can never +traverse. And the farther north one goes, of course, the more +magnificent the displays. + +Last night we watched the auroral bands gather and grow in a cold +green sky, straight to the north of us, and then waver and deepen +until they reached the very zenith, where they hung, swaying curtains +of fire. No wonder the redskins call that wild pageantry of color the +ghost-dance of their gods. Even as we watched them, opal and gold and +rose and orange and green, we could see them come wheeling down on our +little world like an army of angels with incandescent swords. It made +one imagine that the very heavens were aflame, going up in quivering +veils of white and red and green. And when it was over I listened to a +long argument about the Aurora Borealis, or the Aurora Polaris, as +Gershom insisted it should be called. + +Dinky-Dunk contended that one could _hear_ these Northern Lights +overhead, on a clear night. He described the sound as sometimes a +faint crackling, like that of a comb drawn through your hair, and +sometimes as a soft rustling noise, like the rustling of a silk +petticoat heard through a closed door, coming closer and closer as the +display wavered farther and farther toward the south. + +Gershom was disposed to dispute this, so our old Klondiker, Whinstane +Sandy, was called in to give evidence. He did so promptly and +positively, saying he'd heard the Lights many a night in the Far +North. Gershom is still unconvinced, but intends to look up his +authorities on the matter. He attributes them to sun-spots and asserts +it's a well-known fact they often put the telephone and telegraph +wires out of commission. He has proposed that we sit up and study them +some night, through his telescope, which he is disinterring from the +bottom of his trunk.... + +My lord and master is going about with a less clouded eye, for he has +succeeded in selling the Harris Ranch, and selling it for thirty-five +hundred dollars more than he had expected. It is to go, eventually, to +some tenderfoot out of the East, to some tenderfoot who can have very +little definite knowledge of land-values in this jumping-off place on +the edge of the world. But may that tenderfoot, whoever he is, be +happy in his new home! Dinky-Dunk is now forever figuring up what he +will get for his grain. He's preoccupied with his plans for branching +out in the business world. His heart is no longer in his work here. I +sometimes feel that we're all merely accidents in his life. And that +feeling leaves me with a heart so heavy that I have to keep busy, or +I'd fall to luxuriating in that self-pity which is good for neither +man nor beast. + +Yet Dinky-Dunk is not all hardness. He surprises me, now and then, by +disturbing little gestures of boyishness. He announced to me the other +night that the only way to get any use out of a worn-out husband was +to revamp him, with the accent on the vamp. I understood what he +meant, and I think I actually changed color a trifle. But I know of +nothing more desolating than trying to make love to a man either +against his will or against your own will. It would be a terrible +thing to have him tell you there was no longer any kick in your +kisses. So I remain on my dignity. I am companionable, and nothing +more. When we were saying good-by, the last time he went off to the +city, and he looked up at my perfunctory and quite meaningless peck on +his cheek, I felt myself blushing before his quiet and half-quizzical +stare. Then he laughed a little as he turned away and pulled on his +gauntlets. "The sweeter the champagne, I suppose, the colder it should +be served!" he rather cryptically remarked as he climbed into the +waiting car. And yesterday he let his soul emerge from its tent of +reticence when he climbed up on the wagon-box to stare out over his +sea of all but ripened wheat. "Come, money!" he said, with his arms +stretched out before him. Now, that was a trick which he had caught +from my little Dinkie. I don't know how or where the boy first picked +up the habit, but when he particularly wants something he stands +solemnly out in the open, with his two little arms outstretched, as +though he were supplicating Heaven itself, and says "Come, +jack-knife!" or "Come, jelly-roll!" or "Come, rain!" according to his +particular desires of the particular moment. I think he really caught +it from an illustration in _The Arabian Nights_, from the picture of +Cassim grandiloquently proclaiming "Open Sesame!" He is an imaginative +little beggar. "Mummy," he said to me the other night, "see all the +moonlight that's been spilled on the grass!" But children are made +that way. Even my sage little Poppsy, when a marigold-leaf fell in the +bowl of our solitary gold-fish, cried out to me: "See, Mummy, our fish +has had a baby!" Sex is still an enigma to her, as much an enigma as +it was away last spring when, not being quite sure whether her new +kitten was a little boy-cat or a little girl-cat, she sagaciously +christened it "Willie-Alice." And a few weeks later, when the +unmistakable appearance of tail-feathers finally persuaded even her +optimistic young heart that the two chicks which had been bequeathed +to her were dishearteningly masculine in their tendencies, she +officially re-christened the apostate "Elaine" and "Rowena," and +thereafter solemnly accepted them as "Archie" and "Albert." And while +speaking of this mysteriously ramifying factor of sex, I am compelled +to acknowledge that I encountered a rather disturbing little +back-flare of Freudian hell-fire only a couple of evenings ago. It +took my thoughts galloping back to the time in our post-nuptial era +when Dinky-Dunk went Berserker and chased me around the haystacks with +my hair flying. I'd taken Dinkie upon my lap, and, without quite +knowing it, sat stroking his frowsy young head. My thoughts, in fact, +were a thousand miles away. Then, still without giving much attention +to what I was doing, I squeezed that warm little body up close against +my own. I was astounded, the next moment, to see my small offspring +turn on me with all the lusty fierceness of the cave man. He got his +arms about me and buried his face in my neck and kissed me as no +gentleman, big or little, should ever kiss a lady. His small body was +shaken with a subliminal and quite unexpected gust of feeling, just +as I've seen a June-time garden shaken by an unexpected gust of wind. +It passed away, of course, about as quickly as it came--but with it +went a scattering of the white petals of childhood unconcern. + +I don't suppose my poor little Dinkie has yet awakened to the fact +that his body is a worn river-bed down which must race the freshets of +far-off racial instincts. But the thing disturbed me more than I'd be +willing to admit. There are murky corridors in the house of life. They +stand there, and they must be faced. There are rooms where the air +must be kept stirring, corners into which the clear sanity of sunlight +must be thrown. Dinkie, since he has stepped into his first experience +in the keeping of rabbits, has been asking me a number of rather +disconcerting questions. His father, I notice, has the habit of +half-diffidently referring the boy to me, just as I nursed the earlier +habit of referring him to his father. But some time soon Dinkie and I +will have to have a serious talk about this thing called Life, this +Life which is so much more uncompromisingly brutal than the child-mind +can conceive.... + +By the way, there's a lot of nonsense talked about motherhood +softening women. It may soften them in some ways, but there are many +others in which it hardens them. It draws their power of love together +into a fixed point, just as the lens of a burning-glass concentrates +the vague warmth of the sun into one small and fiercely illuminated +area. It is a form of selfishness, I suppose, but it is a selfishness +nature imposes upon us. And it is sanctified by the end it serves. At +every turn, now, I find that I am thinking of my children. I seem to +have my eyes set steadily on something far, far ahead. I'm not quite +certain just what this something is. It's a sort of secret between me +and the Master of Life. But the memory of it makes my days more +endurable. It allows me to face the future without a quaver of regret. +I am a woman, and I am no longer young. But it gives me courage to +laugh in the teeth of Time. + +And to laugh, to laugh whatever happens--that is the great thing! It +isn't age I dread. But I'd hate to lose that lightness with which +those blessed ones we call the young can move through the world, that +self-renewing freshness which converts every daybreak into a dewy new +world and mints every sunrise into a brand new life ... I asked +Gershom to-day if he could possibly tell me how many Parker House +rolls a square mile of wheat running forty bushels to the acre would +make. And he surprised me by inquiring how many quarts of buttermilk +it would take to shingle a cow. Gershom is widening out a bit.... + +Dinkie, I notice, has just compiled a list of horses. I read from his +carefully ruled half-page: + +"Draght horses; carriege horses; riding horses; racing horses; +ponyies; percheron from france; Belgain from Beljium; shire clyesdale +and saffold punch from great Britain; french coach and German coach; +contucky saddle horses; through-breads; Shetland ponies; mushstand +ponies; pacers and pintoes." Thus recordeth my Toddler. + + + + +_Sunday the Ninth_ + + +I have had Dinkie in bed for the last five days, with a bruised foot. +Duncan shortened the stirrups and put the boy on Briquette, who had +just proved a handful for even an old horse-wrangler like Cuba Sebeck. +Briquette bucked and threw the boy. And Dinkie, in the mix-up, got a +hoof-pound on the ankle. No bones were broken, luckily, but the foot +was very sore and swollen for a few days. No word about the episode +has passed between Duncan and me. But I'm glad, all things considered, +that I was not a witness of the accident. The clouds are already quite +heavy enough over Casa Grande. + +Dinkie and his mater, however, have been drawn much closer together +during the last few days. I've talked to him, and read to him, and +without either of us being altogether conscious of it there has been +an opening of a closed door or two. Dinkie loves to be read to. The +new world of the imagination is just opening up to him. And I envy the +rapture of the child in books, rapture not yet spoiled by the +intellectual conceit of the grown-up. + +But I'm not the only reader about this ranch. I'm afraid the copy of +Burns which Santa Claus brought to Whinstane Sandy last Christmas is +not adding to his matrimonial tendencies as love-plaints of that +nature should. At noon, as soon as dinner is over, he sits on the back +step, poring over his beloved Tammas. And at night, now that the +evenings are chillier, he retreats to the bunk-house stove, where he +smokes and reads aloud. His own mother, he tells me, used to say many +of those pieces to him when he was a wee laddie. He both outraged and +angered poor Struthers, last Sunday, by reading _Tam O'Shanter_ aloud +to her. That autumnal vestal proclaimed that it was anything but +suitable literature for an old philanderer who still saw fit to live +alone. It showed, she averred, a shocking lack of respect for +women-folk and should be taken over by the police. + +Struthers even begins to suspect that this much-thumbed volume of +Burns lies at the root of Whinnie's accumulating misanthropy. She has +asked me if I thought a volume of Mrs. Hemans would be of service in +leading the deluded old misogynist back to the light. The matter has +become a more urgent one since Cuba Sebeck suffered a severe bilious +attack and a consequent sea-change in his affections. But I'm afraid +our Whinnie is too old a bird to be trapped by printer's ink. I +notice, in fact, that Struthers is once more spending her evenings in +knitting winter socks. And I have a shadow of a suspicion that they +are for the obdurate one. + +My Dinkie, by the way, has written his first poem, or, rather, his +first two poems. The first one he slipped folded into my sewing-basket +and I found it when I was looking for new buttons for Pauline +Augusta's red sweater. It reads: + + No more we smel the sweet clover, + Floting on the breeze all over. + But now we hear the wild geese calling; + And lissen, tis the grey owl yowling. + +The second one, however, was a more ambitious effort. He worked over +it, propped up in bed, for an hour or two. Then, having looked upon +his work and having seen that it was good, he blushingly passed it +over to me. So I went to the window and read it. + + O blue-bird, happy robbin-- + Who teached those birds to stick theirselves together? + Who teached them how to put their tails on? + Who teached them how to hold tight on the tree tops? + Who gived them all the fetthers on their brest? + Who gived them all the eggs with little birdies in them? + Who teached them how to make the shells so blue? + Who teached them how to com home in the dark? + Twas God. Twas God. He teached him! + +I read it over slowly, with a crazy fluttering of the heart which I +could never explain. They were so trivial, those little halting lines, +and yet so momentous to me! It was life seeking expression, life +groping so mysteriously toward music. It was man emerging out of the +dusk of time. It was Rodin's _Penseur_, not in grim and stately +bronze, but in a soft-eyed and white-bodied child, groping his +stumbling way toward the border-land of consciousness, staring out on +a new world and finding it wonderful. It was my Little Stumbler, my +Precious Piece-of-Life, walking with his arm first linked through the +arm of Mystery. It was my Dinkie looking over the rampart of the +home-nest and breaking lark-like into song. + +I went back to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, and took my +man-child in my arms. + +"It's wonderful, Dinkie," I said, trying to hide the tears I was so +ashamed of. "It's so wonderful, my boy, that I'm going to keep it with +me, always, as long as I live. And some day, when you are a great +man, and all the world is at your feet, I'm going to bring it to you +and show it to you. For I know now that you are going to be a great +man, and that your old mother is going to live to be so proud of you +it'll make her heart ache with joy!" + +He hugged me close, in a little back-wash of rapture, and then settled +down on his pillows. + +"I could do better ones than that," he finally said, with a glowing +eye. + +"Yes," I agreed. "They'll be better and better. And that'll make your +old Mummsy prouder and prouder!" + +He lay silent for several minutes. Then he looked at the square of +paper which I held folded in my hand. + +"I'd like to send it to Uncle Peter," he rather startled me by +saying. + + + + +_Saturday the Twenty-Ninth_ + + +Once more I'm a grass widow. My Duncan is awa'. He scooted for Calgary +as soon as his threshing-work was finished up. But that tumult is over +and once more I've a chance to sit down and commune with my soul. +Everything here is over-running with wheat. Our bins are bursting. The +lord of the realm is secretly delighted, but he has said little about +it. He has a narrow course to steer. He is grateful for the money that +this wheat will bring in to him, yet he can see it would never do to +harp too loudly on the productiveness of our land--on _my_ land, I +ought to say, for Casa Grande has now been formally deeded to me. I +find no sense of triumph, however, in that transfer. I am depressed, +in fact, at the very thought of it. It seems to carry a vague air of +the valedictory. But I refuse to be intimidated by the future. + +Gershom and I, indeed, have been indulging in the study of astronomy. +The air was crystal clear last night, so that solemn youth suggested +that we take out the old telescope and study the stars. Which we did. +And which was much more wonderful than I had imagined. But Gershom had +no reflector, so after getting a neck-ache trying to inspect the +heavens while on our feet we took the old buffalo-robe and a couple of +rugs out to a straw-pile that had been hauled in to protect our winter +perennials. There we indecorously reposed on our backs and went +stargazing in comfort. And Gershom even forgot that painful +bashfulness of his when he fell to talking about the planets. He +slipped out of his shell and spoke with genuine feeling. + +He suggested that we begin with the Big Dipper, which I could locate +easily enough well up in the northern sky. That, Gershom told me, was +sometimes called the Great Bear, though it was only a part of the real +_Ursa Major_ of the astronomers. Then he showed me Benetnasch at the +end of the Dipper's handle, and Mizar at the bend in the handle, then +Alioth, and then Megrez, which joins the handle to the bowl. Then he +showed me Phaed and Merak, which mark the bottom of the bowl, and then +Dubhe at the bowl's outer rim. + +I tried hard, but I was very stupid about getting the names right. +Then Gershom asked me to look up at Mizar, and see if I could make +out a small star quite close to it. I did so, without much trouble, +and Gershom thereupon condescended to admit that I had exceptionally +good eyes. For that star, he explained, was Alcor, and Alcor was +Arabic for "the proof," and for centuries and centuries the ability to +see that star had been accepted as the proof of good vision. + +Then Gershom went on to the other constellations, and talked of suns +of the first and second magnitude, and pointed out Sirius, in whose +honor great temples had once been built in Egypt, and Arcturus, the +same old Arcturus that a Hebrew poet by the name of Job had sung +about, and Vega and Capella and Rigel, which he said sent out eight +thousand times more light than our sun, and is at least thirty-four +thousand times as big. + +But it only made me dizzy and staggered my mind. I couldn't comprehend +the distances he was talking about. I just couldn't make it, any more +than a bronco that had been used to jumping a six-barred gate could +vault over a windmill tower. And I had to tell Gershom that it didn't +do a bit of good informing me that Sirius was comparatively close to +us, as it stood only nine light-years away. I remembered how he had +explained that light travels one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles +a second, and that there are thirty million seconds in a year, so that +a light-year is about five and a half million million of miles. But +when he started to tell me that some of the so-called photographic +stars are thirty-two thousand light-years away from us my imagination +just curled up and died. It didn't mean anything to me. It couldn't. I +tried in vain to project my puny little soul through all that space. +At first it was rather bewildering. Then it grew into something +touched with grandeur. Then it took on an aspect of awfulness. And +from that it grew into a sort of ghastliness, until the machinery of +the mind choked and balked and stopped working altogether, like an +overloaded motor. I had to reach out in the cold air and catch hold of +Gershom's arm. I felt a hunger to cling to something warm and human. + +"We call this world of ours a pretty big world," Gershom was saying. +"But look at Betelgeuse up there, which Michelson has been able to +measure. He has, at least, succeeded in measuring the angle at the eye +that Betelgeuse subtends, so that after estimating its parallax as +given by a heliometer, it's merely a matter of trigonometry to work +out the size of the star. And he estimated Betelgeuse to be two +hundred and sixty million miles in diameter. That means it would take +twenty-seven million of our suns to equal it in bulk. So that this big +world of ours, which takes so many weeks to crawl about on the fastest +ships and the fastest trains, is really a mote of dust, something +smaller than the smallest pin-prick, compared to that far-away sun up +there on the shoulder of Orion!" + +"Stop!" I cried. "You're positively giving me a chill up my spine. +You're making me feel so lonesome, Gershom, that you're giving me +goose-flesh. You're not leaving me anything to get hold of. You +haven't even left me anything to stand on. I'm only a little speck of +Nothing on a nit of a world in a puny little universe which is only a +little freckle on the face of some greater universe which is only a +lost child in a city of bigger constellations which in turn have still +lonelier suns to swing about, until I go on and on, and wonder with a +gasp what is beyond the end of space. But I can't go on thinking about +it. I simply can't. It upsets me, the same as an earthquake would, +when you look about for something solid and find that even your solid +old earth is going back on you!" + +"On the contrary," said Gershom as he put down his telescope, "I know +nothing more conducive to serenity than the study of astronomy. It has +a tendency to teach you, in the first place, just how insignificant +you are in the general scheme of things. The naked eye, in clear air +like this, can see over eight thousand stars. The larger telescopes +reveal a hundred million stars, and the photographic dry-plate has +shown that there are several thousands of millions which can be +definitely recorded. So that you and I are not altogether the whole +works. And to remember that, when we are feeling a bit important, is +good for our Ego!" + +I didn't answer him, for I was busy just then studying the Milky Way. +And I couldn't help feeling that it must have been on a night like +this that a certain young shepherd watching his flocks on the uplands +of Canaan sat studying the infinite stairways of star-dust that +"sloped through darkness up to God" and was moved to say: "When I +consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars +which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, or +the son of man that Thou visitest him?" + +"Yes, Gershom, it's horribly humiliating," I said as I squinted up at +those serene heavens. "They last forever. And we come and go out, and +nobody knows why!" + +"Pardon me," corrected the literal-minded Gershom. "They do not last +forever. They come and go out, just as we do. Only they take longer. +Consider the Dipper up there, for instance. A hundred thousand years +from now that Dipper will be perceptibly altered, for we know the +lateral movement of Dubhe and Benetnasch will give the outer line of +the bowl a greater flare and make the crook of the handle a trifle +sharper. Even a thousand years would show change enough for +instruments to detect. And a million years will probably show the +group pretty well broken up. But the one regrettable feature, of +course, is that we will not be here to see it." + +"Where will we be?" I asked Gershom. + +"I don't know," he finally admitted, after an unexpectedly long +silence. + +"But will it all go on, forever and forever and forever?" + +"To do so is not in the nature of things," was Gershom's quiet-toned +reply. "It is the destiny of our own earth, of course, which most +interests us. And however we look at it, that destiny is a gloomy +one. Its heat may fail. Stupart, in fact, has established that its +temperature is going down one and a half degrees every thousand years. +Or its volcanic elevating forces may give out, so that the land will +subside and the water wash over it from pole to pole. Or a comet may +wipe up its atmosphere, the same as one sponge-sweep wipes up moisture +from a slate. Or the sun itself may cool, so that the last of our race +will stand huddled together in a solarium somewhere on the Equator. Or +as our sun rushes toward Lyra, it may bump into a derelict sun, just +as a ship bumps into a wreck. If that derelict were as big as our sun, +astronomers would see it at least fifteen years before the collision. +For five or six years it would even be visible to the naked eye, so +that the race, or what remained of the race, would have plenty of time +to think things over and put its house in order. Then, of course, we'd +go up like a singed feather. And there'd be no more breakfasts to +worry over, and no more wheat to thresh, and no more school fires to +start in the morning, and no more children to make think you know more +than you really do, and not even any more hearts to ache. There would +be just Emptiness, just voiceless and never-ending Nothingness!" + +Gershom stopped speaking and sat staring up at Orion. Then he turned +and looked at me. + +"What's the matter?" he asked, for he must have felt my shiver under +the robe. + +"Nothing," I said in a thin and pallid voice. "Only I think I'll go +back to the house. And I'm going to make a pot of good hot cocoa!" ... +And that's mostly what life is: making little pots of cocoa to keep +our bodies warm in the midst of a never-ending chilliness! + + + + +_Tuesday the Eighth_ + + +My husband is home again. He came back with the first blizzard of the +winter and had a hard time getting through to Casa Grande. This gives +him all the excuses he could desire for railing at prairie life. I +told him, after patiently listening to him cussing about everything in +sight, that it was plain to see that he belonged to the land of the +beaver. He promptly requested to know what I meant by that. + +"Doesn't the beaver regard it as necessary to dam his home before he +considers it fit to live in?" I retorted. But Duncan, in that +estranging new mood of his, didn't relax a line. He even announced, a +little later on, that a quick-silver wit might be all right if it +could be kept from running over. And it was my turn to ask if he had +any particular reference to allusions. + +"Well, for one thing," he told me, "there's this tiresome habit of +hitching nicknames on to everything in sight." + +I asked him what names he objected to. + +"To begin right at home," he retorted, "I regard 'Dinkie' as an +especially silly name for a big hulk of a boy. I think it's about time +that youngster was called by his proper name." + +I'd never thought about it, to tell the truth. His real name, I +remembered, was Elmer Duncan McKail. That endearing diminutive of +"Dinkie" had stuck to him from his baby days, and in my fond and +foolish eyes, of course, had always seemed to fit him. But even +Gershom had spoken to me on the matter, months before, asking me if I +preferred the boy to be known as "Dinkie" to his school mates. And I'd +told Gershom that I didn't believe we could get rid of the "Dinkie" if +we wanted to. His father, I knew, had once objected to "Duncan," as he +had no liking to be dubbed "Old Duncan" while his offspring would +answer to "Young Duncan." And "Duncan," as a name, had never greatly +appealed to me. But it is plain now that I have been remiss in the +matter. So hereafter we'll have to make an effort to have our little +Dinkie known as Elmer. It's like bringing a new child into the family +circle, a new child we're not quite acquainted with. But these things, +I suppose, have to be faced. So hereafter my laddie shall officially +be known as "Elmer," Elmer Duncan McKail. And I have started the ball +rolling by duly inscribing in his new books "Elmer D. McKail" and +requesting Gershom to address his pupil as "Elmer." + +I've been wondering, in the meantime, if Duncan is going to insist on +a revision of all our ranch names, the names so tangled up with love +and good-natured laughter and memories of the past. Take our horses +alone: Tumble-weed and timeless Tithonus, Buntie and Briquette, +Laughing-gas and Coco the Third, Mudski and Tarzanette. I'd hate now +to lose those names. They are the register of our friendly love for +our animals. + +It begins to creep through this thick head of mine that my husband no +longer nurses any real love for either these animals or prairie life. +And if that is the case, he will never get anything out of prairie +living. It will be useless for him even to try. So I may as well do +what I can to reconcile myself to the inevitable. I am not without my +moments of revolt. But in those moods when I feel a bit uppish I +remember about my recent venture into astronomy. What's the use of +worrying, anyway? There was one ice age, and there is going to be +another ice age. I tell myself that my troubles are pretty trivial, +after all, since I'm only one of many millions on this earth and +since this earth is only one of many millions of other earths which +will swing about their suns billions and billions of years after I and +my children and my children's children are withered into dust. + +It rather takes my breath away, at times, and I shy away from it the +same as Pauline Augusta shies away from the sight of blood. It reminds +me of Chaddie's New York lady with whom the Bishop ventured to discuss +ultimate destinies. "Yes, I suppose I shall enter into eternal bliss," +responded this fair lady, "but would you mind not discussing such +disagreeable subjects at tea-time?" + +Speaking of disagreeable subjects, we seem to have a new little +trouble-maker here at Casa Grande. It's in the form of a brindle pup +called Minty, which Dinkie--I mean, of course, which Elmer, acquired +in exchange for a jack-knife and what was left of his _Swiss Family +Robinson_. But Minty has not been well treated by the world, and was +brought home with a broken leg. So Whinnie and I made splints out of +an old cigar-box cover, and padded the fracture with cotton wool and +bound it up with tape. Minty, in the moderated spirits of invalidism, +was a meek and well behaved pup during the first few days after his +arrival, sleeping quietly at the foot of Elmer's bed and stumping +around after his new master like a war veteran awaiting his discharge. +But now that Minty's leg is getting better and he finds himself in a +world that flows with warm milk and much petting, he betrays a +tendency to use any odd article of wearing apparel as a teething-ring. +He has completely ruined one of my bedroom slippers and done +Mexican-drawn-work on the ends of the two living-room window-curtains. +But what is much more ominous, Minty yesterday got hold of +Dinky-Dunk's Stetson and made one side of its rim look as though it +had been put through a meat-chopper. So my lord and master has been +making inquiries about Minty and Minty's right of possession. And the +order has gone forth that hereafter no canines are to sleep in this +house. It impresses me as a trifle unreasonable, all things +considered, and Elmer, with a rather unsteady underlip, has asked me +if Minty must be taken away from him. But I have no intention of +countermanding Duncan's order. The crust over the volcano is quite +thin enough, as it is. And whatever happens, I am resolved to be a +meek and dutiful wife. But I've had a talk with Whinnie and he's going +to fix up a comfortable box behind the stove in the bunk-house, and +there the exiled Minty will soon learn to repose in peace. It's +marvelous, though, how that little three-legged animal loves my +Dinkie, loves my Elmer, I should say. He licks my laddie's shoes and +yelps with joy at the smell of his pillow ... Poor little +abundant-hearted mite, overflowing with love! But life, I suppose, +will see to it that he is brought to reason. We must learn not to be +too happy on this earth. And we must learn that love isn't always +given all it asks for. + + + + +_Thursday the Seventeenth_ + + +The crust over the volcano has shown itself to be even thinner than I +imagined. The lava-shell gave way, under our very feet, and I've had a +glimpse of the molten fury that can flow about us without our knowing +it. And like so many of life's tragic moments, it began out of +something that is almost ridiculous in its triviality. + +Night before last, when Struthers was rather late in setting her +bread, she heard Minty scratching and whimpering at the back door, and +without giving much thought to what she was doing, let him into the +house. Minty, of course, went scampering up to Dinkie's bed, where he +slept secretly and joyously until morning. And all might have been +well, even at this, had not Minty's return to his kingdom gone to his +head. To find some fitting way of expressing his joy must have taxed +that brindle pup's ingenuity, for, before any of us were up, he +descended to the living-room, where he delightedly and diligently +proceeded to remove the upholstery from the old Chesterfield. By the +time I came on the scene, at any rate, there was nothing but a grisly +skeleton of the Chesterfield left. Now, that particular piece of +furniture had known hard use, and there were places where the mohair +had been worn through, and I'd even discussed the expediency of having +the thing done over. But I knew that Minty's efforts to hasten this +movement would not meet with approval. So I discreetly decided to have +Whinnie and Struthers remove the tell-tale skeleton to the bunk-house. +Before that transfer could be effected, however, the Dour Man invaded +the living-room and stood with a cold and accusatory eye inspecting +that monument of destructiveness. + +"Where's Elmer?" he demanded, with a grim look which started by heart +pounding. + +"Elmer's dressing," I said as quietly as I could. "Do you want him?" + +"I do," announced my husband, whiter in the face than I had seen him +for many a day. + +"What for?" I asked. + +"I think you know what for," he said, meeting my eye. + +"I'm not sure that I do," I found the courage to retort. "But I'd +prefer being certain." + +Duncan, instead of answering me, went to the foot of the stairs and +called his son. Then he strode out of the room and out of the house. +Struthers, in the meantime, circumspectly took possession of Minty, +who was still indecorously shaking a bit of mohair between his jocund +young teeth. She and Minty vanished from the scene. A moment later, +however, Duncan walked back into the room. He had a riding-quirt in +his hand. + +"Where's that boy?" he demanded. + +I went out to the foot of the stairs, where I met Elmer coming down, +buttoning his waist as he came. For just a moment his eye met mine. It +was a questioning eye, but not a cowardly one. I had intended to speak +to him, but my voice, for some reason, didn't respond to my will. So I +merely took the boy's hand and led him into the living-room. There his +father stood confronting him. + +"Did that pup sleep on your bed last night?" demanded the man with the +quirt. + +"Yes," said the child, after a moment of silence. + +"Did you hear me say that no dog was to sleep in this house?" demanded +the child's father. + +"Yes," said Elmer, with his own face as white as his father's. + +"Then I think that's about enough," asserted Duncan, turning a +challenging eye in my direction. + +"What are you going to do?" I asked. My voice was shaking, in spite of +myself. + +"I'm going to whale that youngster within an inch of his life," said +the master of the house, with a deadly sort of intentness. + +"I don't want you to do that," I quavered, wondering why my words, +even as I uttered them, should seem so inadequate. + +"Of course you don't," mocked my husband. "But this is the limit. And +what you want isn't going to count!" + +"I don't want you to do that," I repeated. Something in my voice, I +suppose, must have arrested him, for he stood there, staring at me, +with a little knot coming and going on one side of his skull, just in +front of his upper ear-tip. + +"And why not?" he asked, still with that hateful rough ironic note in +his voice. + +"Because you don't know what you're punishing this child for," I told +him with all the quietness I could command. "And because you're in no +fit condition to do it." + +"You needn't worry about my condition," he cried out--and I could see +by the way he said it that he was still blind with rage. "Come here, +you!" he called to Dinkie. + +It was then that the fatal little bell clanged somewhere at the back +of my head, the bell that rings down the curtain on all the slowly +accumulated civilization the centuries may have brought to us. I not +only faced my husband with a snort of scorn, but I tightened my grip +on the child's hand. I tightened my grip on his hand and backed slowly +and deliberately away until I came to the door of my sewing-room. +Then, still facing my husband, I opened that door and said: "Go +inside, Dinkie." I could not see the boy, but I knew that he had done +as I told him. So I promptly slammed the door shut and stood there +facing the gray-lipped man with the riding-quirt in his hand. He took +two slow steps toward me. His chin was thrust out in a way that made +me think of a fighting-cock's beak. He had not shaved that morning, +and his squared jaw looked stubbled and blue and ugly. + +"You can't pull that petticoat stuff this time," he said in a hard and +throaty tone which I had never heard from him before. "Get out of my +way!" + +"You will not beat that child!" And I myself couldn't have made a +very pretty picture as I flung that challenge up in his teeth. + +"Get out of my way," he repeated. He did not shout it. He said it +almost quietly. But I knew, even before he reached out a shaking hand +to thrust me aside, that he was in deadly earnest, that nothing I +could say would hold him back or turn him aside. And it was then that +my eye fell on the big Colt in its stained leather holster, hanging up +high over one corner of the book-cabinet, where it had been put beyond +the reach of the children. + +I have no memory of giving any thought to the matter. My reaction must +have been both immediate and automatic. I don't think I even intended +to bunt my husband in the short-ribs the way I did, for the impact of +my body half twisted him about and sent him staggering back several +steps. All I know is that holster and belt came tumbling down as I +sprang and caught at the Colt handle. And I was back at the door +before I had even shaken the revolver free. I was back just in time to +hear my husband say, rather foolishly, for the third time: "Get out of +my way!" + +"You stay back there!" I called, quite as foolishly, for by this time +I had the Colt balanced in my hand and was pointing it directly at his +body. + +He stopped short, with a vacuous look in his eyes. + +"_You fool!_" he said, in a sort of strangled whisper. But it was my +face, and not the weapon, that he was staring at all the while. + +"Stay back!" I said again, with my eyes fixed on his. + +He hesitated, for a moment, and made a sound that was like the short +bark of a laugh. It was too hard and horrible, though, ever to be +taken for laughter. And I knew that he was not going to do what I had +said. + +"Stay back!" I warned him still again. But he stepped forward, with a +grim sort of deliberation, with his challenging gaze locked on mine. I +could hear a thousand warning voices, somewhere at the back of my +brain, and at the same time I could hear a thousand singing devils in +my blood trying to drown out those voices. I could see my husband's +narrowed eyes slowly widen, slowly open like the gills of a dying +fish, for the hate that he must have seen on my face obviously +arrested him. It arrested him, but it arrested him only for a moment. +He dropped his eyes to the Colt in my hand. Then he moved deliberately +forward until his body was almost against the barrel-end. I must have +known what it meant, just as he must have known what it meant. It was +his final challenge. And I must have met that challenge. For, without +quite knowing it, I shut my eyes and pulled the trigger. + +There had been something awful, I know, in that momentary silence. And +there was something awful in the sound that came after it, though it +was not the sound my subconscious mind was waiting for. It was +distinct enough and significant enough, heaven knows. But instead of +the explosion of a shell it was the sharp snap of steel against +steel. + +The revolver was empty. It was empty-had been empty for weeks. But the +significant fact remained that I had deliberately pulled the trigger. +I had stood ready, in my moment of madness, to kill the man that I +lived with.... + +Had a ball of lead gone through that man's body, I don't think he +could have staggered back with a more startled expression on his face. +He looked more than bewildered; he looked vaguely humiliated, oddly +and wordlessly affronted, as he stood leaning against the table-edge, +breathing hard, his skin a mottled blue-white to the very lips. He +made an effort to speak, but no sound came from him. For a moment the +dreadful thought raced through me that I had indeed shot him, that in +some mysterious way he was mortally hurt, without this particular +bullet announcing itself as bullets usually do. I looked at the +revolver, stupidly. It seemed to have grown heavy, as heavy as a +cook-stove in my hand. + +"You'd do that?" whispered my husband, very slowly, with a stricken +light in his eyes which I couldn't quite understand. I intended to put +the Colt on the table. But something must have been wrong with my +vision, for the loathsome thing fell loathsomely to the floor. I felt +sick and shaken and a horrible misty feeling of homelessness settled +down about me, of a sudden, for I remembered how closely I had skirted +the black gulf of murder. + +"Oh, Dinky-Dunk!" I blubbered, weakly, as I groped toward him. He must +have thought that I was going to fall, for he put out his arm and held +me up. He held me up, but there wasn't an atom of warmth in his +embrace. He held me up about the same as he'd hold up an open +wheat-sack that threatened to tumble over on his granary floor. I +don't know what reaction it was that took my strength away from me, +but I clung to his shoulders and sobbed there. I felt as alone in the +gray wastes of time as one of Gershom's lost stars. And I knew that +my Dinky-Dunk would never bend down now and whisper into my ear any +word of comfort, any word of forgiveness. For, however things may have +been at the first, I was the one who was now so hopelessly in the +wrong, _I_ was the big offender. And that knowledge only added to my +misery as I stood there clinging to my husband's shoulders and +blubbering "Oh, Dinky-Dunk!" + +It must have grown distasteful to him, my foolish hanging on to him as +though he were a hitching-post, for he finally said in a remote voice: +"I guess we've had about enough of this." He led me rather +ceremoniously to a chair, and slowly let me down in it. Then he +crossed over to the old leather holster and picked it up, and stooped +for the revolver, and pushed it down in the holster and buckled the +cover-flap and tossed the whole thing up to the top of the +book-cabinet again. Then, without speaking to me, he walked slowly out +of the room. + +I was tempted to call him back, but I knew, on second thought, that it +would be no use. I merely sat there, staring ahead of me. Then I shut +my eyes and tried to think. I don't know why, but I was thinking about +the bigness of Betelgeuse, which was twenty-seven million times as big +as our sun and which was going on through its millions of miles of +space without knowing anything about Chaddie McKail and what had +happened to her that morning. I was wondering if there were worlds +between me and Betelgeuse with women on them, with women as alone as I +was, when I felt a pair of small arms tighten about my knees and an +adoring small voice whispered "Mummsy!" And I forgot about Betelgeuse. +For it was my Dinkie there, with his little rough hand reaching +hungrily for mine.... + +Minty has been removed from Casa Grande. I took him over to the +Teetzel ranch in the car, and young Dode Teetzel is to get a dollar a +week for looking after him and feeding him. Only Elmer and I know of +his whereabouts. And once a week the boy can canter over on Buntie and +keep in touch with his pup. + +We have a tacit understanding that the occurrences of yesterday +morning are a closed chapter, are not to be referred to by word or +deed. Duncan himself found it necessary to team in to Buckhorn and +left word with Struthers that he would stay in town over night. The +call for the Buckhorn trip was, of course, a polite fabrication, an +expedient _pax in bello_ to permit the dust of battle to settle a +little about this troubled house of McKail. All day to-day I have +felt rather languid. I suppose it's the lethargy which naturally +follows after all violence. Any respectable woman, I used to think, +could keep a dead-line in her soul, beyond which the impulses of evil +dare not venture. But I must have been wrong.... All week I've been +looking for a letter from Peter Ketley. But for once in his life he +seems to have forgotten us. + + + + +_Sunday the Twentieth_ + + +I've been wondering to-day just what I'd do if I had to earn my own +living. I could run a ranch, I suppose, if I still had one, but two or +three years of such work would see me a hatchet-faced old termagant +with fallen arches and a prairie-squint. Or I could raise chickens and +peddle dated eggs in a flivver-and fresco hen-coops with whitewash +until the trap-nest of time swallowed me up in oblivion. Or I could +take a rural school somewhere and teach the three R's to little +Slovenes and Frisians and French-Canadians even more urgently in need +of soap and water. Or perhaps I could be housekeeper for one of our +new beef-kings in his new Queen-Anne Norman-Georgian Venetian palace +of Alberta sandstone with tesselated towers and bungalow +sleeping-porches. Or I might even peddle magazines, or start a little +bakery in one of the little board-fronted shops of Buckhorn, or take +in plain sewing and dispose of home-made preserves to the élite of the +community. + +But each and all of them would be mere gestures of defeat. I'm of no +value to the world. There was a time when I regarded myself as quite a +Somebody, and prided myself on having an idea or two. Didn't Percy +even once denominate me as "a window-dresser"? There was a time when I +didn't have to wait to see if the pearl-handled knife was the one +intended for the fish-course, and I could walk across a waxed floor +without breaking my neck and do a bit of shopping in the Rue de la +Paix without being taken for a tourist. But that was a long, long time +ago. And life during the last few years has both humbled me and taught +me my limitations. I'm a house-wife, now, and nothing more--and not +even a successful house-wife. I've let everything fall away except the +thought of my home and my family. And now I find that the basket into +which I so carefully packed all my eggs hasn't even a bottom to it. + +But I've no intention of repining. Heaven knows I've never wanted to +sit on the Mourner's Bench. I've never tried to pull a sour mug, as +Dinky-Dunk once inelegantly expressed it. I love life and the joy of +life, and I want all of it I can get. I believe in laughter, and I've +a weakness for men and women who can sing as they work. But I've +blundered into a black frost, and even though there was something to +sing about, there's scarcely a blue-bird left to do the singing. But +sometime, somewhere, there'll be an end to that silence. The blight +will pass, and I'll break out again. I know it. I don't intend to be +held down. I _can't_ be held down. I haven't the remotest idea of how +it's going to happen, but I'm going to love life again, and be happy, +and carol out like a meadow-lark on a blue and breezy April morning. +It may not come to-morrow, and it may not come the next day. But it's +going to come. And knowing it's going to come, I can afford to sit +tight, and abide my time.... + +I've just had a letter from Uncle Chandler, enclosing snap-shots of +the place he's bought in New Jersey. It looks very palatial and +settled and Old-Worldish, shaded and shadowed with trees and softened +with herbage, dignified by the hand of time. It reminds me how many +and many a long year will have to go by before our bald young prairie +can be tamed and petted into a homeyness like that. Uncle Chandler has +rather startled me by suggesting that we send Elmer through to him, to +go to school in the East. He says the boy can attend Montclair +Academy, that he can be taken there and called for every day by +faithful old Fisher, in the cabriolet, and that on Sunday he can be +toted regularly to St. Luke's Episcopal Church, and occasionally go +into New York for some of the better concerts, and even have a +governess of his own, if he'd care for it. And in case I should be +worrying about his welfare Uncle Chandler would send me a weekly +night-letter "describing the condition and the activities of the +child," as the letter expresses it. It sounds very appealing, but +every time I try to think it over my heart goes down like a dab-chick. +My Dinkie is such a little fellow. And he's my first-born, my +man-child, and he means so much in my life. Yet he and his father are +not getting along very well together. It would be better, in many +respects, if the boy could get away for a while, until the raw edges +healed over again. It would be better for both of them. But there's +one thing that would happen: he would grow away from his mother. He'd +come back to me a stranger. He'd come back a little ashamed of his +shabby prairie mater, with her ten-years-old style of hair-dressing +and her moss-grown ideas of things and her bald-looking prairie home +with no repose and no dignifying background and neither a private gym +nor a butler to wheel in the cinnamon-toast. He'd be having all those +things, under Uncle Chandler's roof: he'd get used to them and he'd +expect them. + +But there's one thing he wouldn't and couldn't have. He wouldn't have +his mother. And no one can take a mother's place, with a boy like +that. No one could understand him, and make allowances for him, and +explain things to him, as his own mother could. I've been thinking +about that, all afternoon as I ironed his waists and his blue +flannellet pajamas with frogs on like his dad's. And I've been +thinking of it all evening as I patched his brown corduroy knickers +and darned his little stockings and balled them up in a neat little +row. I tried to picture myself as packing them away in a trunk, and +putting in beside them all the clothes he would need, and the books +that he could never get along without, and the childish little +treasures he'd have to carry away to his new home. But it was too much +for me. There was one thing, I began to see, which could never, never +happen. I could never willingly be parted from my Dinkie. I could +think of nothing to pay me up for losing him. And he needed me as I +needed him. For good or bad, we'd have to stick together. Mother and +son, together in some way we'd have to sink or swim! + + + + +_Wednesday the Thirtieth_ + + +The tension has been relieved by Dinky-Dunk going off to Calgary. +Along with him he has taken a rather formidable amount of his personal +belongings. But he explains this by stating that business will keep +him in the city for at least six or seven weeks. He has been talking a +good deal about the Barcona coal-mine of late, and the last night he +was with us he talked to Gershom for an hour and more about the +advantages of those newer mines over the Drumheller. The newer field +has a solid slate roof which makes drifting safe and easy, a finer +type of coal, and a chance for big money once the railway runs in its +spur and the officials wake up to the importance of giving them the +cars they need. The whole country, Dinky-Dunk claims, is underlaid +with coal, and our province alone is estimated to contain almost +seventeen per cent. of the world's known supply. And my lord and +master expressed the intention of being in on the clean-up. + +I don't know how much of this was intended for my ears. But it served +to disquiet me, for reasons I couldn't quite discern. And the same +vague depression crept over me when Dinky-Dunk took his departure. I +kept up my air of blitheness, it is true, to the last moment, and was +as casual as you please in helping Duncan to pack and reminding him to +put his shaving-things in his bag and making sure the last button was +on his pajamas. I kissed him good-by, as a dutiful wife ought, and +held Pauline Augusta up in the doorway so that she might attempt a +last-minute hand-waving at her daddy. + +But I slumped, once it was all over. I felt mysteriously alone in an +indifferent big world with the rime of winter creeping along its +edges. Even Gershom, after the children had had their lesson, became +conscious of my preoccupation and went so far as to ask if I wasn't +feeling well. + +I smilingly assured him that there was nothing much wrong with me. + +"_Lerne zu leiden ohne zu klagen!_" as the dying Frederick said to a +singularly foolish son. + +"But you're upset?" persisted Gershom, with his valorous brand of +timidity that so often reminds me of a robin defending her eggs. + +"No, it's not that," I said with a shake of the head. "It's only that +I'm--I'm a trifle too chilly to be comfortable." + +And the foolish youth, at that, straightway fell to stoking the fire. +I had to laugh a little. And that made him study me with solemn eyes. + +"Just think, Gershom," I said as I gathered up my sewing, "my heart is +perishing of cold in a province which is estimated to contain almost +seventeen per cent. of the world's known coal supply!" + +And that, apparently, left him with something to think about as I made +my way off to bed ... It's hard to write coherently, I find, when +you're not living coherently ... + +Syd Woodward, of Buckhorn, having learned that I can drive a tractor, +has asked me if I'll take part in the plowing-match to-morrow. And +I've given my promise to show Mere Man what a woman can do in the +matter of turning a mile-long furrow. I feel rather audacious over it +all. And I'm glad to inject a little excitement into life ... I'm +saving up for a new sewing-machine ... Tarzanette has got rather badly +cut up in some of our barb-wire fencing. + + + + +_Friday the Fifteenth_ + + +The plowing-match was good fun, and I enjoyed it even more than I had +expected. The men "kidded" me a good deal, and gave me a cheer at the +end (I don't quite know whether it was for my work or my costume) and +I had to pose for photographs, and a moving-picture man even followed +me about for a round, shooting me as I turned my prairie stubble +upside down. But the excitement of the plowing-match has been eclipsed +by a bit of news which has rather taken my breath away. _It is Peter +Ketley who has bought the Harris Ranch._ + + + + +_Saturday the Twenty-Third_ + + +The rains have brought mushrooms, slathers of mushrooms, and I joy in +gathering them. + +Yesterday afternoon I rode past the Harris Ranch. The old place +brought back a confusion of memories. But I was most disturbed by the +signs of building going on there. It seems to mean a new shack on +Alabama Ranch. And a new shack of very considerable dimensions. I've +been wondering what this implies. I don't know whether to be elated or +depressed. And what business is it, after all, of mine? + +My Dinkie--I have altogether given up trying to call my Dinkie +anything but Dinkie--came home two evenings ago with a discolored eye +and a distinct air of silence. Gershom, too, seemed equally reticent. +So I set about discreetly third-degreeing Poppsy, who finally +acknowledged, with awe in her voice, that Dinkie had been in a fight. + +It was, according to my petticoated Herodotus, a truly terrible fight. +Noses got bloodied, and no one could make the fighters stop. But +Dinkie was unquestionably the conqueror. Yet, oddly enough, I am +informed that he cried all through the combat. He was a crying +fighter. And he had his fight with Climmie O'Lone--trust the Irish to +look for trouble!--who seems to have been accepted as the ring-master +of his younger clan. Their differences arose out of the accusation +that Dinkie, my bashful little Dinkie, had been forcing his unwelcomed +attention on one Doreen O'Lone, Climmie's younger sister. That's +absurd, of course. And Dinkie must have realized it. He didn't want to +fight, acknowledged Poppsy, from the first. He even cried over it. And +Doreen also cried. And Poppsy herself joined in. + +I fancy it was a truly Homeric struggle, for it seems to have lasted +for round after round. It lasted, I have been able to gather, until +Climmie was worsted and down on his back crying "Enough!" Which Poppsy +reports Dinkie made him say three times, until Doreen nodded and said +she'd heard. But my young son, apparently, is one of those crying +fighters, who are reckoned, if I remember right, as the worst breed of +belligerents! + +I have decided not to tell Dinkie what I know. But I'm rather anxious +to get a glimpse of this young Mistress Doreen, for whom lances are +already being shattered in the lists of youth. The O'Lones regard +themselves as the landed aristocracy of the Elk-trail District. And +Doreen O'Lone impresses me as a very musical appellative. Yet I prefer +to keep my kin free from all entangling alliances, even though they +have to do with a cattle-king's offspring.... + +I had a short letter from Dinky-Dunk to-day, asking me to send on a +package of papers which he had left in a pigeon-hole of his desk here. +It was a depressingly non-committal little note, without a glimmer of +warmth between the lines. I'm afraid there's a certain ugly truth +which will have to be faced some day. But I intend to stick to the +ship as long as the ship can keep afloat. I am so essentially a family +woman that I can't conceive of life without its home circle. Home, +however, is where the heart is. And it seems to take more than one +heart to keep it going. I keep reminding myself that I have my +children at the same time that I keep asking myself why my children +are not enough, why they can't seem to fill my cup of contentment as +they ought. Now that their father is so much away, a great deal of +their training is falling on my shoulders. And I must, in some way, be +a model to them. So I'll continue to show them what a Penelope I can +be. Perhaps, after all, they will prove our salvation. For our +offspring ought to be the snow-fences along the wind-harried rails of +matrimony. They should prevent drifting along the line, and from +terminal to lonely terminal should keep traffic open ... I have +to-night induced Poppsy to write a long and affectionate letter to her +_pater_, telling him all the news of Casa Grande. Perhaps it will +awaken a little pang in the breast of her absent parent. + + + + +_Monday the Twenty-Fifth_ + + +I have aroused the ire of the Dour Man. He has sent me a message +strongly disapproving of my conduct. He even claims that I've +humiliated him. I never dreamed, when that movie-man with the camera +followed me about at the plowing-match, that my husband would wander +into a Calgary picture-house and behold his wife in driving gauntlets +and Stetson mounted on a tractor and twiddling her fingers at the +camera-operator, just to show how much at home she felt! Dinky-Dunk +must have experienced a distinctly new thrill when he saw his own wife +come riding through that pictorial news weekly. He would have +preferred not recognizing me, I suppose. But there I was, duly named +and labeled--and hence the ponderous little note of disapproval. + +But I'm not going to let Duncan start a quarrel over trivialities like +this. I intend to sit tight. There'd be little use in argument, +anyway, for Duncan would only ignore me as the predatory tom-cat +ignores the foolishly scolding robin. I'm going to be a regular +mallard, and stick to these home regions until the ice forms. And our +most mountainous troubles, after all, can't quite survive being +exteriorated through the ink-well. It relieves me to write about them. +But I wish I had a woman of my own age to talk to. I get a bit lonely, +now that winter is slipping down out of the North again. And I find +that I'm not so companionable as I ought to be. It comes home to me, +now and then, how far away from the world we are, how remote from +everything that counts. The tragedy of life with Chaddie McKail, I +suppose, is that she's let existence narrow down to just one thing, to +her family. Other women seem to have substitutes. But I've about +forgotten how to be a social animal. I seem to grow as segregative as +the timber-wolf. There's nothing for me in the woman's club life one +gets out here. I can't force myself into church work, and the rural +reading-club is something beyond me. I simply couldn't endure those +Women's Institute meetings which open with a hymn and end up with +sponge-cake and green tea, after a platitudinous paper on the Beauty +of Prairie Life. It has its beauties, God knows, or we'd all go mad. +We women, in this brand-new land, try to bolster ourselves up with the +belief that we have greatnesses which the rest of the world must get +along without. But that is only the flaunting of _La Panache_, the +feather of courage in our cap of discouragement. There is so much, so +much, we are denied! So much we must do without! So much we must see +go to others! So much we must never even hope for! Oh, pioneers, great +you are and great you must be, to endure what you have endured! You +must be strong in your hours of secret questioning and you must be +strong in your quest for consolation. If nothing else, you must at +least be strong. And these western men of ours should all be strong +men, should all be great men, because they must have been the children +of great mothers. A prairie mother _has_ to be a great woman. She must +be great to survive, to endure, to leave her progeny behind her. I've +heard the Wise Men talk about nature looking after her own. I've heard +sentimentalists sing about the strength that lies in the soil. But, +oh, pioneers, you know what you know! In your secret heart of hearts +you remember the lonely hours, the lonely years, the lonely graves! +For in the matter of infant mortality alone, prairie life shows a +record shocking to read. We are making that better, it is true, with +our district nursing and our motherhood clubs and our rural phones +and our organized letting in of light and passing on of knowledge. We +are not so overburdened as those nobler women who went before us. But, +oh, pioneers along these lonely northern trails, I salute you and +honor you for your courage! Your greatness will never be known. It +will be seen only in the great country which you gave up your lives to +bring to birth! + + + + +_Wednesday the Twenty-Seventh_ + + +What weather-cocks we are! My blue Monday is over and done with, this +is a crystalline winter day with all the earth at peace with itself, +and I've just had a letter from Peter asking if I could take care of +his sister's girl, Susie Mumford, until after Christmas. The Mumfords, +it seems, are going through the divorce-mill, and Susie's mother is +anxious that her one and only child should be afar from the scene when +the grist of liberty is a-grinding. + +I know nothing of Susie except what Peter has told me, that she is not +yet nineteen, that she is intelligent, but obstreperous, and much +wiser than she pretends to be, that the machinery of life has always +run much too smoothly about her for her own good, and that a couple of +months of prairie life might be the means of introducing her to her +own soul. + +That's all I know of Susie, but I shall welcome her to Casa Grande. +I'll be glad to see a city girl again, to talk over face-creams and +the _Follies_ and Tchaikowsky and brassieres and Strindberg with. And +I'll be glad to do a little toward repaying big-hearted old Peter for +all his kindnesses of the past. Susie may be both sophisticated and +intractable, but I await her with joy. She seems almost the answer to +my one big want. + +But Casa Grande, I have been realizing, will have to be refurbished +for its coming guest. We have grown a bit shoddy about the edges here. +It's hard to keep a house spick and span, with two active-bodied +children running about it. And my heart, I suppose, has not been in +that work of late. But I've been on a tour of inspection, and I +realize it's time to reform. So Struthers and I are about to doll up +these dilapidated quarters of ours. And I intend to have my dolorously +neglected Guest Room (for such I used to call it) done over before the +arrival of Susie.... + +I rode over to the Teetzels' this afternoon, to explain about our +cattle getting through on their land. It was the road-workers who +broke down the Teetzel fence, to squat on a coulée-corner for their +camp. And they hadn't the decency to restore what they had wrecked. So +Bud Teetzel and I rode seven miles up the new turn-pike and overtook +those road-workers and I harangued their foreman for a full fifteen +minutes. But it made little impression on him. He merely grinned and +stared at me with a sort of insolent admiration on his face. And when +I had finished he audibly remarked to one of his teamsters that I made +a fine figure of a woman on horseback. + +Bud says they're thinking of selling out if they can get their price. +The old folks want to move to Victoria, and Bud and his brother have a +hankering to try their luck up in the Peace River District. I asked +Bud if he wouldn't rather settle down in one of the big cities. He +merely laughed at me. "No thank you, lady! This old prair-ee is +comp'ny enough for me!" he said as he loped, brown as a nut, along the +trail as tawny as a lion's mane, with a sky of steel-cold blue smiling +down on his lopsided old sombrero. I studied him with a less +impersonal eye. He was a handsome and husky young giant, with the joy +of life still frankly imprinted on his face. + +"Bud," I said as I loped along beside him, "why haven't you ever +married?" + +That made him laugh again. Then he turned russet as he showed me the +white of an eye. + +"All the peaches seemed picked, in this district," he found the +courage to proclaim. + +This made me trot out the old platitude about the fish in the sea +being as good as any ever caught--and there really ought to be an +excise tax on platitudes, for being addicted to them is quite as bad +as being addicted to alcohol, and quite as benumbing to the brain. + +But Bud, with his next speech, brought me up short. + +"Say, lady, if _you_ was still in the runnin' I'd give 'em a race +that'd make a coyote look like a caterpillar on crutches!" + +He said it solemnly, and his solemnity kept it respectful. But it was +my turn to laugh. And ridiculous as it may sound, this doesn't impress +me as such a dark world as I had imagined! A woman, after all, is a +good deal like mother earth: each has to be cultivated a little to +keep it mellow. + +... Where the Female is, there also is the Unexpected. For when I got +home I found that my decorous Poppsy, my irreproachable Poppsy, had +succumbed before the temptation to investigate my new sewing-machine. +And once having nibbled at the fruit of the tree of knowledge, she +went rampaging through the whole garden. She made a stubborn effort to +exhaust the possibilities of all the little hemmers, and tried the +shirrer and the fire-stitch ruffler, and obviously had a fling at the +binder and a turn at the tucker. What she did to the tension-spring +heaven only knows. And my brand-new machine is on the blink. And my +meek-eyed little Poppsy isn't as impeccable as the world about her +imagined! + + + + +_Wednesday the Third_ + + +Susie Mumford arrived yesterday. The weather, heaven be thanked, was +perfect, an opal day with the earth as fresh-smelling as Poppsy just +out of her bath. There was just enough chill in the air to make one's +blood tingle and just enough warmth in the sunlight to make it feel +like a benediction. Whinstane Sandy, in fact, avers that we're in for +a spell of Indian Summer. + +I motored in to Buckhorn and met Susie, who wasn't in the least what I +expected. I was looking for a high-spirited and insolent-eyed young +lady who'd probably be traveling with a French maid and a van-load of +trunks, after the manner of Lady Alicia. But the Susie I met was a +tired and listless and rather white-faced girl who reminds me just +enough of her Uncle Peter to make me like her. The poor child knows +next to nothing of the continent on which she was born, and the +immensity of our West has rather appalled her. She told me, driving +home, that she had never before been this side of the Adirondacks. +Yet she has crossed the Atlantic eight times and knows western Europe +about as well as she knows Long Island itself. There is a +matter-of-factness about Susie which makes her easy to get along with. +Poppsy took to her at once and was a garrulous and happy witness of +Susie's unpacking. Dinkie, on the other hand, developed an altogether +unlooked-for shyness and turned red when Susie kissed him. There was +no melting of the ice until the strange lady produced a very wonderful +toy air-ship, which you wind up and which soars right over the +haystacks, if you start it right. This was a present which Peter sent +out. Dinkie, in fact, spent most of his spare time last night writing +a letter to his Uncle Peter, a letter which he intimated he had no +wish for the rest of the family to read. He was willing to +acknowledge, this morning, that since he and Susie both had the same +Uncle Peter, they really ought to be cousins.... + +Susie has not been sleeping well, and for all her weariness last night +had to take five grains of veronal before she could settle down. The +result is that she looks whiter than ever this morning and ate very +little of Struthers' really splendiferous breakfast. But she made a +valorous enough effort to be blithe and has rambled about Casa Grande +with the febrile, quick curiosity of a young setter, making friends +with the animals and for the first time in her life picking an egg out +of a nest. I was afraid, at first, that she was going to complain +about the quietness of existence out here, for our pace must seem a +slow one, after New York. But Susie says the one thing she wants is +peace. It's not often a girl not yet out of her teens makes any such +qualified demand on life. I can't help feeling that the break-up of +her family must be depressing her more than she pretends. She speaks +about it in a half-joking way, however, and said this morning: "Dad +certainly deserves a little freedom!" We sat for an hour at the +breakfast-table, pow-wowing about everything under the blessed sun. + +In some ways Susie is a very mature woman, for nineteen and +three-quarters. She is also an exceptionally companionable one. She +has a sort of lapis-lazuli eye with paler streaks in the iris, like +banded agate. It is a brooding eye, with a great deal of beauty in it. +And she has a magnolia-white skin which one doesn't often see on the +prairie. It's not the sort of skin, in fact, which could last very +long on the open range. It's the sort that's had too much bevel plate +between it and the buffeting winds of the world. But it's lovely to +look upon, especially when it's touched with its almost imperceptible +shell-pink of excitement as it was this afternoon when Susie climbed +on Buntie and tried a canter or two about the corrals. Susie, I +noticed, rode well. I couldn't quite make out why her riding made me +at once think of Theobald Gustav. But she explained, later, that she +had been taught by a German riding-master--and then I understood. + +But I must not overlook Gershom, who duly donned his Sunday best in +honor of Susie's arrival and who is already undertaking to educate the +brooding-eyed young lady from the East. He explained to her that there +were eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles of Canada still +unexplored, and Susie said: "Then lead me into the most far-away part +of it!" And when he told her, during their first meal together, that +the human brain was estimated to contain half a billion cells and that +the number of brain impressions collected by an average person during +fifty years of life aggregated three billion, one hundred and +fifty-five million, seven hundred and sixty thousand, Susie sighed and +said it was no wonder women were so contradictory. Which impressed me +as very like one of my own retorts to Gershom. I saw Susie studying +him, studying him with a quiet and meditative eye. "I believe your +Gershom is one of the few good men in the world," she afterward +acknowledged to me. And I've been wondering why one so young should be +saturated with cynicism. + +A small incident occurred to-night which disturbed me more than I can +explain to myself. Susie, who had been looking through one of Dinkie's +school scribblers, guardedly passed the book over to me where I sat +sewing in front of the fire. For, whatever may happen, a prairie +mother can always find plenty of sewing to do. I looked at the bottom +of the page which Susie pointed out to me. There I saw two names, one +above the other, with certain of the letters stricken out, two names +written like this: + +[E][l]m[e][r] McKai[l]----love +Do[r][e][e]n O'[L]on[e]----friendship + +[Transcriber's note: In original, letters in brackets are struck out, +each with a diagonal slash.] + +And that set me off in a brown study which even Susie seemed to +fathom. She smiled understandingly and turned and inspected Dinkie, +bent over his arithmetic, with an entirely new curiosity. + +"I suppose that's what every mother has to face, some day," she said +as she sat down beside me in front of the fire. + +But it seemed a fire without warmth. Life, apparently, had brought me +to another of its Great Divides. My boy had a secret apart from his +mother. My son was no longer all mine. + + + + +_Friday the Fifth_ + + +This morning at breakfast, when Dinkie and I were alone at the table, +I crossed over to him and sat down beside him. + +"Dinkie," I said, with my hand on his tousled young head, "whom do you +love best in all the world?" + +"Mummy!" he said, looking me straight in the eye. And at that I drank +in a deep breath. + +"Are you sure?" I demanded. + +"As sure as death and taxes," he said with his one-sided little smile. +It was a phrase which his father used to use, on similar occasions, in +the long, long ago. And it didn't quite drive the mists out of my +heart. + +"And who comes next?" I asked, with my hand still on his head. + +"Buntie," he replied, with what I suspected to be a barricaded look on +his face. + +"No, no," I told him. "It has to be a human being." + +"Then Poppsy," he admitted. + +"And who next?" I persisted. + +"Whinnie!" exclaimed my son. + +But I had to shake my head at that. + +"Aren't you forgetting somebody very important?" I hinted. + +"Who?" he asked, deepening just a trifle in color. + +"How about daddy?" I asked. "Isn't it about time for him there?" + +"Yes, daddy," he dutifully repeated. But his face cleared, and my own +heart clouded, as he went through the empty rite. + +Dinkie was studying that clouded face of mine, by this time, and I +began to feel embarrassed. But I was determined to see the thing +through. It was hard, though, for me to say what I wanted to. + +"Isn't there somebody, somebody else you are especially fond of?" I +inquired, as artlessly as I could. And it hurt like cold steel to +think that I had to fence with my own boy in such a fashion. + +Dinkie looked at me and then he looked out of the window. + +"I think I like Susie," he finally admitted. + +"But in your own life, Dinkie, in your work and your play, in your +school, isn't--isn't there _somebody_?" I found the courage to ask. + +Dinkie's face grew thoughtful. For just a moment, I thought I caught a +touch of the Holbein Astronomer in it. + +"There's lots of boys and girls I like," he noncommittally asserted. +And I began to see that it was hopeless. My boy had reservations from +his own mother, reservations which I would be compelled to respect. He +was no longer entirely and unequivocally mine. There was a wild-bird +part of him which had escaped, which I could never recapture and cage +again. The thing that his father had foretold was really coming about. +My laddie would some day grow out of my reach. I would lose him. And +my happiness, which had been trying its wings for the last few days, +came down out of the sky like a shot duck. All day long, for Susie's +sake, I've tried to be light-hearted. But my efforts make me think of +a poor old worn-out movie-hall piano doing its pathetic level best to +be magnificently blithe. It's a meaningless clatter in a meaningless +world. + + + + +_Thursday the Eleventh_ + + +It ought to be winter, according to the almanac, but our wonderful +Indian Summer weather continues. Susie and I have been "blue-doming" +to-day. We converted ourselves into a mounted escort for Gershom and +the kiddies as far as the schoolhouse, and then rode on to Dead Horse +Lake, in the hope of getting a few duck. But the weather was too fine, +though I managed to bring down a couple of mallard, after one of which +Susie, having removed her shoes and stockings, waded knee-deep in the +slough. She enjoys that sort of thing: it's something so entirely new +to the child of the city. And Susie, I might add, is already looking +much better. She is sleeping soundly, at last, and has promised me +there shall be no more night-caps of veronal. What is more, I am +getting to know her better--and I have several revisions to make. + +In the first place, it is not the family divorce cloud that has been +darkening Susie's soul. She let the cat out of the bag, on the way +home this afternoon. Susie has been in love with a man who didn't come +up to expectations. She was very much in love, apparently, and +disregarded what people said about him. Then, much to her surprise, +her Uncle Peter took a hand in the game. It must have been rather a +violent hand, for a person so habitually placid. But Peter, +apparently, wasn't altogether ignorant of the club-talk about the +young rake in question. At any rate, he decided it was about time to +act. Susie declined to explain in just what way he acted. Yet she +admits now that Peter was entirely in the right and she, for a time, +was entirely in the wrong. But it is rather like having one's appendix +cut out, she protests, without an anesthetic. It takes time to heal +such wounds. Susie obviously was bowled over. She is still suffering +from shock. But I like the spirit of the girl. She's not the kind that +one disappointment is going to kill. And prairie life is already doing +her good. For she announced this morning that her clothes were +positively getting tight for her. And such clothes they are! Such +delicate silks and cobwebs of lace and pale-pink contraptions of +satin! Such neatly tailored skirts and short-vamped shoes and +thing-a-ma-jigs of Irish linen and platinum and gold trinkets to deck +out her contemptuous little body with. For Susie takes them all with a +shrug of indifference. She loves to slip on my oil-stained old +hunting-jacket and my weather-beaten old golf-boots and go meandering +about the range. + +Another revision which I am compelled to make is that while I expected +to be the means of cheering Susie up, Susie has quite unconsciously +been the means of rejuvenating _me_. I think I've been able to catch +at least a hollow echo of her youth from her. I _know_ I have. Two +days ago, when we motored in to Buckhorn with my precious marketing of +butter and eggs--and Susie never before quite realized how butter and +eggs reached the ultimate consumer--a visiting Odd-Fellows' band was +playing a two-step on the balcony of the Commercial Hotel. Susie and I +stopped the car, and while Struthers stared at us aghast from the back +seat, we two-stepped together on the main street of Buckhorn. We just +let the music go to our heads and danced there until the crowd in +front of the band began to right-about-face and a cowboy in chaps +brazenly announced that he was Susie's next partner. So we danced to +our running-board, stepped into our devil-wagon, and headed for home, +in the icy aura of Struthers' sustained indignation. + +I begin to get terribly tired of propriety. I don't know whether it's +Struthers, or Struthers and Gershom combined, or having to watch one's +step so when there are children about one. But I'm tired of being +respectable. I'm tired of holding myself in. I warn the world that I'm +about ready for anything, anything from horse-stealing to putting a +dummy-lady in Whinstane Sandy's bed. I don't believe there's any +wickedness that's beyond me. I'm a reckless and abandoned woman. And +if that cold-blooded old Covenanter doesn't get home from Calgary +pretty soon I'm going buckboard riding with Bud Teetzel! + +I've been asking Susie if we measure up to her expectations. She said, +in reply, that we fitted in to a T. For her Uncle Peter, she +acknowledged, had already done us in oils on the canvas of her +curiosity. She accused me, however, of reveling in that primitiveness +which is the last resort of the sophisticated--like the log cabins the +city folk fashion for themselves when they get up in the Adirondacks. +And Casa Grande, she further amended, impressed her as being almost +disappointingly comfortable. + +After that Susie fell to talking about Peter. She is affectionately +contemptuous toward her uncle, protesting that he's forever throwing +away his chances and letting other people impose on his good nature. +It was lucky, averred Susie, that he was born with a silver spoon in +his mouth. For he was a hopeless espouser of Lost Causes. She inclined +to the belief that he should have married young, should have married +young and had a flock of children, for he was crazy about kiddies. + +I asked Susie what sort of wife Peter should have chosen. And Susie +said Peter should have hitched up with a good, capable, +practical-minded woman who could manage him without letting him know +he was being managed. There was a widow in the East, acknowledged his +niece, who had been angling for poor Peter for years. And Peter was +still free, Susie suspected, because in the presence of that widow he +emulated Hamlet and always put an antic disposition on. Did the most +absurd things, and appeared to be little more than half-witted. The +widow in question had even spoken to Susie about her uncle's +eccentricities and intimated that his segregative manner of life might +in the end affect his intellect! + +The thought of Peter marrying rather gave me a shock. It was like +being told by some authority in astronomy that your earth was about to +collide with Wernecke's Comet. And, vain peacock that I was, I rather +liked to think of Peter going through life mourning for me, alone and +melancholy and misogynistic for the rest of his days! Yet there must +be dozens, there must be hundreds, of attractive girls along the paths +which he travels. I found the courage to mention this fact to Susie, +who merely laughed and said her Uncle Peter would probably be saved by +his homeliness. But I can't say that I ever regarded Peter Ketley as +homely. He may never carry off a blue ribbon from a beauty show, but +he has the sort of face that a woman of sense can find tremendous +appeal in. Your flapper type, I suppose, will always succumb to the +curled Romeo, but it's the ruggeder and stronger man with the bright +mind and the kindly heart who will always appeal to the clearer-eyed +woman who has come to know life.... Susie has told me, by the way, +that Josie Langdon and her husband quarreled on their honeymoon, +quarreled the first week in Paris and right across the Continent for +the momentous reason that Josie _insisted on putting sugar in her +claret_! + +I've been doing a good deal of thinking, the last few hours. I've been +wondering if I'm a Lost Cause. And I've been wondering why women +should want to put sugar in their claret. If it's made to be bitter, +why not accept the bitterness, and let it go at that? + + + + +_Friday the Twelfth_ + + +Dinky-Dunk has just sent word that he will be home to-morrow night and +asks if I'll mind motoring in to Buckhorn for him. + +It impresses me as a non-committal little message, yet it means more +to me than I imagined. _My husband is coming home._ + +Susie has been eying me all afternoon, with a pucker of perplexity +about her lapis-lazuli eyes. We are busy, getting things to rights. +And I've made an appallingly long list of what I must buy in Buckhorn +to-morrow. Even Struthers has perked up a bit, and is making furtive +preparations for a sage-tea wash in the morning. + + + + +_Tuesday the Sixteenth_ + + +Why is life so tangled up? Why can't we be either completely happy or +completely the other way? Why must wretchedness come sandwiched in +between slices of hope and contentment, and why must happiness be +haunted by some ghostly echo of pain? And why can't people be all good +or all bad, so that the tares and the wheat never get mixed up +together and make a dismal mess of our harvest of Expectation? + +These are some of the questions I've been asking myself since Duncan +went back to Calgary last night. He stayed only two days. And they +were days of terribly complicated emotions. I went to the station for +him, on Saturday, and in my impatience to be there on time found +myself with an hour and a half of waiting, an hour and a half of +wandering up and down that ugly open platform in the clear cool light +of evening. There was a hint of winter in the air, an intimidating +northern nip which made the thought of a warm home and an open fire a +consolation to the chilled heart. And I felt depressed, in spite of +everything I could do to bolster up my courage. In the first place, I +couldn't keep from thinking of Alsina Teeswater. And in the second +place, never, never on the prairie, have I watched a railway-train +come in or a railway-train pass away without feeling lonesome. It +reminds me how big is the outside world, how infinitesimal is Chaddie +McKail and her unremembered existence up here a thousand miles from +Nowhere! It humbles me. It reminds me that I have in some way failed +to mesh in with the bigger machinery of life. + +I had a lump in my throat, by the time Dinky-Dunk's train pulled in +and I saw him swing down from the car-steps. I made for him through +the crowd, in fact, with my all but forgotten Australian crawl-stroke, +and accosted him with rather a briny kiss and so tight a hug that he +stood back and studied my face. He wanted to ask, I know, if anything +had happened. He was obviously startled, and just a trifle +embarrassed. My lump, by this time, was bigger than ever, but I had to +swallow it in secret. Dinky-Dunk, I found, was changed in many ways. +He was tired, and he seemed older. But he was prosperous-looking, in +brand-new raiment, and reported that luck was still with him and +everything was flourishing. Give him one year, he protested, and he'd +show them he wasn't a piker. + +I waited for him to ask about the children, but his mind seemed full +of his Barcona coal business. The railway was learning to treat them +half decently and the coal was coming out better than they'd hoped +for. They'd a franchise to light the town, developing their power from +the mine screenings, and what they got from this would be so much +velvet. And he had a chance to take over one of the finest houses in +Mount Royal, if he had a family along with him to excuse such +magnificence. + +That final speech of his brought me up short. It was dark along the +trail, and dark in my heart. And more things than one had happened +that day to humble me. So I took one hand off the wheel and put it on +his knee. + +"Do you want me to go to Calgary?" I asked him. + +"That's up to you," he said, without budging an inch. He said it, in +fact, with a steel-cold finality which sent my soul cringing back into +its kennel. And the trail ahead of me seemed blacker than ever. + +"I'll have to have time to think it over," I said with a composure +which was nine-tenths pretense. + +"Some wives," he remarked, "are willing to help their husbands." + +"I know it, Dinky-Dunk," I acknowledged, hoping against hope he'd give +me the opening I was looking for. "And I want to help, if you'll only +let me." + +"I think I'm doing my part," he rather solemnly asserted. I couldn't +see his face, in the dark, but there was little hope to be wrung from +the tone of his voice. So I knew it would be best to hold my peace. + +Casa Grande blazed a welcome to us, as we drove up to it, and the +children, thank heaven, were relievingly boisterous over the adventure +of their dad's return. He seemed genuinely amazed at their growth, +seemed slightly irritated at Dinkie's long stares of appraisal, and +feigned an interest in the paraded new possessions of Poppsy and her +brother--until it came to Peter's toy air-ship, which was thrust +almost bruskly aside. + +And that reminds me of one thing which I am reluctant to acknowledge. +Dinky-Dunk was anything but nice to Susie. He may have his perverse +reasons for disliking everything in any way connected with Peter +Ketley, but I at least expected my husband to be agreeable to the +casual guest under his roof. Through it all, I must confess, Susie +was wonderful. She made no effort to ignore Duncan, as his ignoring of +her only too plainly merited. She remained, not only poised and +imperturbable, but impersonal and impenetrable. She found herself, I +think, driven just a tiny bit closer to Gershom, who still shows a +placid exterior to Duncan's slightly contemptuous indifference. + +My husband, I'm afraid, was not altogether happy in his own home. In +one way, of course, I can not altogether blame him for that, since his +bigger interests now are outside that home. But I begin to see how +dangerous these long separations can be. Somewhere and at some time, +before too much water runs under the bridges, there will have to be a +readjustment. + +I realized that, in fact, as I drove Duncan back to the station last +night, after I'd duly signed the different papers he'd brought for +that purpose. I had a feeling that every chug of the motor was +carrying him further and further out of my life. Heaven knows, I was +willing enough to eat crow. I was ready to bury the hatchet, and bury +it in my own bosom, if need be, rather than see it swinging free to +strike some deeper blow. + +"Dinky-Dunk," I said after a particularly long silence between us, +"what is it you want me to do?" + +My heart was beating much faster than he could have imagined and I was +grateful for the chance to pretend the road was taking up most of my +attention. + +"Do about what?" he none too encouragingly inquired. + +"We don't seem to be hitting it off the way we should be," I went on, +speaking as quietly as I was able. "And I want you to tell me where +I'm failing to do my share." + +That note of humility from me must have surprised him a little, for we +rode quite a distance without a word. + +"What makes you feel that way?" he finally asked. + +I found it hard to answer that question. It would never be easy, at +any rate, to answer it as I wanted to. + +"Because things can't go on this way forever," I found the courage to +tell him. + +"Why not?" he asked. He seemed indifferent again. + +"Because they're all wrong," I rather tremulously replied. "Can't you +see they're all wrong?" + +"But why do you want them changed?" he asked with a disheartening sort +of impersonality. + +"For the sake of the children," I told him. And I could feel the +impatient movement of his body on the car seat beside me. + +"The children!" he repeated with acid-drop deliberation. "The +children, of course! It's always the children!" + +"You're still their father," I reminded him. + +"A sort of honorary president of the family," he amended. + +Hope ebbed out of my heart, like air out of a punctured tire. + +"Aren't you making it rather hard for me?" I demanded, trying to hold +myself in, but feeling the bob-cat getting the better of the purring +tabby. + +"I've rather concluded that was the way you made it for _me_," +countered Duncan, with a coolness of manner which I came more and more +to resent. + +"In what way?" I asked. + +"In shutting up shop," he rather listlessly responded. + +"I don't think I quite understand," I told him. + +"Well, in crowbarring me out of your scheme of life, if you insist on +knowing," were the words that came from the husband sitting so close +beside me. "You had your other interests, of course. But you also +seem to have had the idea that you could turn me loose like a range +horse. I could paw for my fodder and eat snow when I got thirsty. You +didn't even care to give me a wind-break to keep a forty-mile blizzard +out of my bones. You didn't know where I was browsing, and didn't much +care. It was up to me to rustle for myself and be rounded up when the +winter was over and there was another spell of work on hand!" + +We rode on in silence, for almost a mile, with the cold air beating +against my body and a colder numbness creeping about the corner of my +heart. + +"Do you mean, Dinky-Dunk," I finally asked, "that you want your +freedom?" + +"I'm not saying that," he said, after another short silence. + +"Then what is it you want?" I asked, wondering why the windshield +should look so blurred in the half-light. + +"I want to get something out of life," was his embittered retort. + +It was a retort that I thought over, thought over with an oddly +settling mind, like a stirred pool that has been left to clear itself. +For that grown man sitting there beside me seemed ridiculously like a +spoiled child, an indulged child forlornly alone in the fogs of his +own arrogance. He made me think of a black bear which bites at the +bullet wound in his own body. I felt suddenly sorry for him, in a +maternal sort of way. I felt sorry for him at the same time that I +remained a trifle afraid of him, for he still possessed, I knew, his +black-bear power of inflicting unlooked-for and ursine blows. I simply +ached to swing about on him and say: "Dinky-Dunk, what you need is a +good spanking!" But I didn't have the courage. I had to keep my sense +of humor under cover, just as you have to blanket garden-geraniums +before the threat of a black frost. Yet, oddly enough, I felt +fortified by that sense of pity. It seemed to bring with it the +impression that Duncan was still a small boy who might some day grow +out of his badness. It made me feel suddenly older and wiser than this +overgrown child who was still crying for the moon. And with that +feeling came a wave of tolerance, followed by a smaller wave of faith, +of faith that everything might yet come out right, if only I could +learn to be patient, as mothers are patient with children. + +"And I, on my part, Dinky-Dunk, want to see you get the very best out +of life," I found myself saying to him. My intentions were good, but I +suppose I made my speech in a very superior and school-teachery sort +of way. + +"I guess I've got about all that's coming to me," he retorted, with +the note of bitterness still in his voice. + +And again I had the feeling of sitting mother-wise and mother-patient +beside an unruly small boy. + +"There's much more, Dinky-Dunk, if you only ask for it," I said as +gently as I was able. + +He turned, at that, and studied me in the failing light, studied me +with a sharp look of interrogation on his face. I had the feeling, as +he did so, of something epochal in the air, as though the drama of +life were narrowing up to its climactic last moment. Yet I felt +helpless to direct the course of that drama. I nursed the impression +that we stood at the parting of the ways, that we stood hesitating at +the fork of two long and lonely trails which struck off across an +illimitable world, farther and farther apart. I vaguely regretted that +we were already in the streets of Buckhorn, for I was half hoping that +Duncan would tell me to stop the car. Then I vaguely regretted that I +was busy driving that car, as otherwise I might have been free to get +my arms about that granitic Dour Man of mine and strangle him into +submitting to that momentary mood of softness which seems to come less +and less to the male as he grows older. + +But Duncan merely laughed, a bit uneasily, and just as suddenly grew +silent again. I had a sense of asbestos curtains coming down between +us, coming down before the climax was reached or the drama was ended. +I couldn't help wondering, as we drove into the cindered station-yard +where the lights were already twinkling, if Dinky-Dunk, like myself, +sat waiting for something which failed to manifest itself, if he too +had held back before the promise of some decisive word which I was +without the power to utter. For we were only half-warm, the two of us, +toying with the ghosts of the dead past and childishly afraid of the +future. We were Laodiceans, neither hot nor cold, without the primal +hunger to reach out and possess what we too timidly desired. We were +more neutral even than Ferdinand and the Lady of the Bust, for we no +longer cared sufficiently to let the other know we cared, but waited +and waited in that twilight where all cats are gray. + +There was, mercifully, very little time left for us before the train +came in. We kept our masks on, and talked only of every-day things, +about the receipt for the ranch taxes and what steers Whinnie should +"finish" and the new granary roof and the fire-lines about the +haystacks. Without quite knowing it, when the train pulled in, I put +my arm through my husband's--and for the second time that evening he +turned sharply and inspected my face. I felt as though I wanted to +hold him back, to hold him back from something unescapable but +tragically momentous. I think he felt sorry for me. At any rate, after +he had swung his suit-case up on the car-platform, he turned and +kissed me good-by. But it was the sort of kiss one gets at funerals. +It left me standing there watching the tail-lights blink off down the +track, as desolate as though I had been left alone on the deadest +promontory of the deadest planet lost in space. I stood there until +the lights were gone. I stood there until the platform was empty again +and my car was the only car left along the hard-packed cinders. So I +climbed into the driving-seat, and pulled on my gauntlets, and headed +for home.... + +Back at Casa Grande I found Dinkie and Whinnie beside the bunk-house +stove, struggling companionably through the opening chapters of +_Treasure Island_. My boy smiled up at me, for a moment, but his +mind, I could see, was intent on the page along which Whinnie's +stubbled finger was crawling like a plowshare beside each furrow of +text. He was in the South Pacific, a thousand miles away from me. In +my own house Struthers was putting a petulant-voiced Poppsy to bed, +and Gershom, up in his room, was making extraordinary smells at his +chemistry experiments. Susie I found curled comfortably up in front of +the fire, idling over my first volume of _Jean Christophe_. + +She read three sentences aloud as I sat down beside her. "How happy he +is! He is made to be happy!...Life will soon see to it that he is +brought to reason." + +She seemed to expect some comment from me, but I found myself with +nothing to say. In fact, we both sat there for a long time, staring in +silence at the fire. + +"Why do you live with a man you don't love?" she suddenly asked out of +the utter stillness. + +It startled me, that question. It also embarrassed me, for I could +feel my color mount as Susie's lapis-lazuli eyes rested on my face. + +"What makes you think I don't love him?" I countered, reminding myself +that Susie, after all, was still a girl in her teens. + +"It's not a matter of thinking," was Susie's quiet retort. "I _know_ +you don't." + +"Then I wish I could be equally certain," I said with a defensive +stiffening of the lines of dignity. + +But Susie smiled rather wearily at my forlorn little parade of +_hauteur_. Then she looked at the fire. + +"It's hell, isn't it, being a woman?" she finally observed, +unconsciously paraphrasing a much older philosopher. + +"Sometimes," I admitted. + +"I don't see why you stand it," was her next meditative shaft in my +direction. + +"What would you do about it?" I guardedly inquired. + +Susie's face took on one of its intent looks. She was only in her +teens, but life, after all, hadn't dealt over-lightly with her. She +impressed me, at the moment, as a secretly ardent young person whose +hard-glazed little body might be a crucible of incandescent though +invisible emotions. + +"What would you do about it?" I repeated, wondering what gave some +persons the royal right of doing the questionable and making it seem +unquestionable. + +"_Live!_" said Susie with quite unlooked-for emphasis. +"_Live_--whatever it costs!" + +"Wouldn't you regard this as living?" I asked, after a moment of +thought. + +"Not as you ought to be," averred Susie. + +"Why not?" I parried. + +Susie sighed. She began to see that it was beyond argument, I suppose. +Then she too had her period of silence. + +"But what are you getting out of it?" she finally demanded. "What is +going to happen? What ever _has_ happened?" + +"To whom?" I asked, resenting the unconscious cruelty of her +questioning. + +"To you," was the reply of the hard-glazed young hedonist confronting +me. + +"Are you flattering me with the inference that I was cut out for +better things?" I interrogated as my gaze met Susie's. It was her turn +to color up a bit. Then she sighed again, and shook her head. + +"I don't suppose it's doing either of us one earthly bit of good," she +said with a listless small smile of atonement. "And I'm sorry." + +So we let the skeletons stalk away from our pleasant fireside and +secrete themselves in their customary closets of silence. + +But I've been thinking a good deal about that question of Susie's. +What _has_ happened to me, out here on the prairie? What has indeed +come into my life?... + +I married young and put a stop to those romantic adventurings which +enrich the lives of most girls and enlighten the days of many women. I +married a man and lived with him in a prairie shack, and sewed and +baked for him, and built a new home and lost it, and began over again. +I had children, and saw one of them die, and felt my girlhood slip +away, and sold butter and eggs, and loved the man of my choice and +cleaved to him and planned for my children, until I saw the man of my +choice love another woman. And still I clung to my sparless hulk of a +home, hoping to hold close about me the children I had brought into +the world and would some day lose again to the world. And that was +all. That was everything. It is true, nothing much has ever happened +to me.... + +But I stop, to think this over. If these are the small things, then +what are the big things of life? What is it that other women get? I +have sung and been happy; I have known great joy and walked big with +Hope. I have loved and been loved. I have known sorrow, and I have +known birth, and I have sat face to face with death. I have, after +all, pretty well run the whole gamut, without perhaps realizing it. +For these, after all, are the big things, the elemental things, of +life. They are the basic things which leave scant room for the +momentary fripperies and the hand-made ornaments of existence.... + +Heigho! I seem to grow into a melancholy Jacques with the advancing +years. That's the way of life, I suppose. But I've no intention of +throwing up the sponge. If I can no longer get as much fun out of the +game as I want, I can at least watch my offspring taking their joy out +of it. God be thanked for giving us our children! We can still rest +our tired old eyes on them, just as the polisher of precious stones +used to keep an emerald in front of him, to relieve his strained +vision by gazing at its soft and soothing greenness. + +I have just crept in to take a look at my precious Dinkie, fast asleep +in the old cast-iron crib that is growing so small for him he has to +lie catercornered on his mattress. He seemed so big, stretched out +there, that he frightened me with the thought he couldn't be a child +much longer. There are no babies left now in my home circle. And I +still have a shamefaced sort of hankering to hold a baby in my arms +again! + + + + +_Wednesday the Thirty-First_ + + +Susie has promised to stay with us until after Christmas. And the +holidays, I realize, are only a few weeks away. Struthers is knitting +a sweater of flaming red and rather grimly acknowledged, when I pinned +her down, that it was for Whinstane Sandy. There was a snow-flurry +Sunday, and Gershom took Susie riding in the old cutter, scratching +grittily along the half-covered trails but apparently enjoying it. My +poor little Poppsy, who rather idolizes Gershom, is transparently +jealous of his attentions to Susie. Yet Gershom, I know, is nice to +Susie and nothing more. He is still my loyal but carefully restrained +knight. It's a shame, I suppose, to bobweasel him the way I +occasionally do. But I can't quite help it. His goody-goodiness is as +provocative to my baser nature as a red flag to an Andulasian bull. +And a woman who was once reckoned as a heart-breaker has to keep her +hand in with _something_. I've got to convince myself that the last +shot hasn't gone from the locker which Duncan Argyll McKail once +rifled. I spoiled Gershom's supper for him the other night by asking +what it was made some people have such a mysterious influence over +other people. And I caught him up short, last Sunday morning, when he +tried to argue that I was a sort of paragon in petticoats. + +"Don't you run away with the idea I'm that kind of an angel," I +promptly assured him. "I'm an outlaw, from saddle to sougan, and I can +buck like a bear fightin' bees. I'm a she-devil crow-hopping around in +skirts. And I could bu'st every commandment slap-bang across my knee, +once I got started, and leave a trail of crime across the fair face of +nature that would make an old Bow-Gun vaquero's back-hair stand up. +I'm just a woman, Gershom, a little lonely and a little loony, and +there's so much backed-up bad in me that once the dam gives way +there'll be a hell-roaring old whoop-up along these dusty old +trails!" + +Gershom turned white. + +"But there's your little ones to think of," he quaveringly reminded +me. + +"Yes, there's my little ones to think of," I echoed, wondering where +I'd heard that familiar old refrain before. My bark, after all, is +much worse than my bite. About all I can do is take things out in +talk. I'm only a faded beauty, brooding over my antique adventures as +a heart-breaker. But I know of one heart I'd still like to break--if I +had the power. No; not break; but bend up to the cracking point! + + + + +_Monday the Nineteenth_ + + +How Time takes wing for the busy! It's only six days to Christmas and +I've still my box to get off for Olga and her children. We've sent to +Peter some really charming snap-shots of the children, which Susie +took. The general effect of one, I must acknowledge, is seriously +damaged by the presence of their Mummy. + +Dinky-Dunk doubts if he'll be able to get home for the holidays. But I +sent him a box, on Saturday, made up of those things which he likes +best to eat and a set of the children's pictures, nicely mounted. I've +also had Dinkie and Poppsy write a long letter to their dad, a task +which they performed with more constraint than I had anticipated. I +had my own difficulties, along the same line, for I had taken a +photograph of poor little Pee-Wee's grave with a snow-drift across one +end of it, and had written on the bottom of the mounting-card: "_We +must remember._" But as I stood studying this, before putting it in +next to Poppsy's huge Christmas-card gay with powdered mica I felt a +foolish tear or two run down my cheek. And I realized it would never +do to cloud my Dinky-Dunk's day with memories which might not be +altogether happy. So I've kept the picture of the little white-fenced +bed with the white snow-drift across its foot.... + +Susie is in bed with a bad cold, which she caught studying astronomy +with Gershom. Poppsy was not in the least put out when she watched me +preparing a mustard-plaster for the invalid. My daughter, I am +persuaded, has a revived faith in the operation of retributive +justice. But I hope Susie is better by the holiday. Whinnie has the +Christmas Tree hidden away in the stable, and already a number of +mysterious parcels have arrived at Casa Grande. Bud Teetzel very +gallantly sent me over a huge turkey, an eighteen-pounder, and +to-morrow I have to go into Buckhorn for my mail-order shipments. We +have decorated the house with a whole box of holly from Victoria and +I've hung a sprig of mistletoe in the living-room doorway. The +children, of course, are on tiptoe with expectation. But I can't +escape the impression that I'm merely acting a part, that I'm a +Pagliacci in petticoats. Heaven knows I clown enough; no one can +accuse me of not going through the gestures. But it seems like +fox-trotting along the deck of a sinking ship. + +I stood under the mistletoe, this morning, and dared Gershom to kiss +me. He turned quite white and made for the door. But I caught him by +the coat, like Potiphar's wife, and pulled him back to the authorizing +berry-sprig and gave him a brazen big smack on the cheek-bone. He +turned a sunset pink, at that, and marched out of the room without +saying a word. But he was shaking his head as he went, at my +shamelessness, I suppose. Poor old Gershom! I wish there were more men +in the world like him. The other day Susie intimated that he was too +homosexual and that it was the polygamous wretches who really kept the +world going. But I refuse to subscribe to that sophomoric philosophy +of hers which would divide the race into fools and knaves. "It's safer +being sane than mad; it's better being good than bad!" as Robert +remarked. And I know at least one strong man who is not bad; and one +bad man who is not strong. + + + + +_Tuesday the Twenty-Seventh_ + + +The great Day has come and gone. And I'm not sorry. There was a cloud +over my heart that kept me from getting the happiness out of it I +ought. I hoped we would hear from Peter, but for the first time in +history he overlooked us. + +Dinky-Dunk, as he had warned us, could not get home for the holidays. +But he surprised me by sending a really wonderful box for the kiddies, +and even a gorgeous silver-mounted collar for Scotty. Susie is up +again, but she is still feeling a bit listless. I heard Gershom +informing her to-night that her blood travels at the rate of seven +miles per hour and that if all the energy of Niagara Falls were +utilized it could supply the world with seven million horse-power. I +do wish Gershom would get over trying to pat the world on the head, +instead of shaking hands with it! I'm afraid I'm losing my lilt. I +can't understand why I should keep feeling as blue as indigo. I am a +well of acid and a little sister to the crab-apple. I think I'll make +Susie come down so we can humanize ourselves with a little music. For +I feel like a Marie Bashkirtseff with a bilious attack.... + +Whinstane Sandy has just come in with Peter's box, two days late. I +felt sure that Peter would not utterly forget us. There is still a +great deal of shouting down in the kitchen, where that most miraculous +of boxes has been unpacked. As for myself, I've had a hankering to be +alone, to think things over. But my meditations don't seem to get me +anywhere.... Dinkie has just come up to show me his brand-new bridle +for Buntie. It is a magnificent bridle, as shiny and jingly as any lad +could desire. I tried to get him to put it down, so that I could draw +him over close to me and talk to him. But Dinkie is too excited for +any such demonstration. He's beginning, I'm afraid, to consider +emotion a bit unmanly. He seems to be losing his craving to be petted +and pampered. There are times, I can see, when he desires his +fence-lines to be respected. + + + + +_Sunday the Twenty-Ninth_ + + +Nearly six weeks, I notice, have slipped by. For a month and a half, +apparently, the impulse to air my troubles went hibernating with the +bears. Yet it has been a mild winter, so far, with very little snow +and a great deal of sunshine--a great deal of sunshine which doesn't +elate me as it ought. I can't remember who it was said a happy people +has no history. But that's not true of a happy woman. It's when her +heart is full that she makes herself heard, that she sings like a lark +to the world. When she's wretched, she retires with her grief.... + +I haven't been altogether wretched, it's true, just as I haven't been +altogether hilarious, but it disturbs me to find that for a month and +a half I haven't written a line in this, the mottled old book of my +life. It's not that the last month or two has been empty, for no +months are really empty. They have to be filled with something. But +there are times, I suppose, when lives lie fallow, the same as fields +lie fallow, times when the days drag like harrow-teeth across the +perplexed loam of our soul and nothing comes of it at all. Not, I +repeat, that I have been momentously unhappy. It's more that a sort of +sterilizing indifferency took possession of me and made the little ups +and downs of existence as unworthy of record as the ups and downs of +the waves on the deadest shores of the Dead Sea. It's not that I'm +idle, and it's not that I'm old, and it's not that there's anything +wrong with this disappointingly healthy body of mine. But I rather +think I need a change of some kind. I even envy Susie, who has ambled +on to the Coast and is staying with the Lougheeds in Victoria, playing +golf and picking winter roses and writing back about her trips up +Vancouver Island and her approaching journey down into California. + +"What do we know of the New World," she parodied in her last letter +that came to me, "who only the old East know?" Then she goes on to +say: "I'm just back from a West Coast trip on the roly-poly _Maquinna_ +and if my thoughts go wobbly and my hand goes crooked it's because my +head is so prodigiously full of + +SEALS +SALMON +SUNSETS +STARS +SURF +SOLANDER ISLAND +SIWASHES +SAGHALIE LAMONTIS +SKOOKUM CHUCK +SEA-LIONS + +[Transcriber's note: In original, initial "S" was one very large +decorative letter, 10 letter-heights tall.] + +and alas, also _Seasickness_, that I can't think straight!" + +Susie's soul, apparently, has had the dry-shampoo it was in need of. +But as for me, I'm like an old horse-shoe with its calks worn off. The +Master-Blacksmith of Life should poke me deep into His fires and fling +me on His anvil and make me over! + +I've been worrying about my Dinkie. It's all so trivial, in a way, and +yet I can't persuade myself it isn't also tragic. He told Susie, +before she left, that he was quite willing to go to bed a little +earlier one night, because then "he could dream about Doreen." And I +noticed, not long ago, that instead of taking just _one_ of our Newton +Pippins to school with him, he had formed the habit of taking _two_. +On making investigation, I discovered that this second apple +ultimately and invariably found its way into the hands of Mistress +Doreen O'Lone. And last week Dinkie autocratically commanded Whinstane +Sandy to hitch Mudski up in the old cutter, to go sleigh-riding with +the lady of his favor to the Teetzels' taffy-pull. Dinkie's mother was +not consulted in the matter--and that is the disturbing feature of it +all. I can't help remembering what Duncan once said about my boy +growing out of my reach. If I ever lost my Dinkie I would indeed be +alone, terribly and hopelessly alone. + + + + +_Wednesday the Eighth_ + + +Dinkie, who has been disturbing me the last few days by going about +with an air of suppressed excitement, brought my anxiety to a head +yesterday by staring into my face and then saying: + +"Mummy, I've got a secret!" + +"What secret?" I asked, doing my best to appear indifferent. + +But Dinkie was not to be trapped. + +"It wouldn't be a secret, if I told you," he sagaciously explained. + +I studied my child with what was supposed to be a reproving eye. + +"You mean you can't even tell your own Mummy?" I demanded. + +He shook his head, in solemn negation. + +"But can you, some day?" I pursued. + +He thought this over. + +"Yes, some day," he acknowledged, squeezing my knee. + +"How long will I have to wait?" I asked, wondering what could bring +such a rhapsodic light into his hazel-specked eye. I thought, of +course, of Doreen O'Lone. And I wished the O'Lones would follow in the +footsteps of so many other successful ranchers and trek off to +California. Then, as I sat studying Dinkie, I countermanded that wish. +For its fulfillment would bring loneliness to the heart of my +laddie--and loneliness is hell! So, instead, I struggled as best I +could to banish all thought of the matter from my mind. But it was +only half a success. I remembered that Gershom himself had been going +about as abstracted as an ant-eater and as gloomy as a crow, during +the last week; and I kept sniffing something unpropitious up-wind. I +even hoped that Dinkie would return to the subject, as children with a +secret have the habit of doing. But he has been as tight-lipped on the +matter as his reticent old dad might have been. + + + + +_Wednesday the Fifteenth_ + + +I got an altogether unlooked-for Valentine yesterday. It was a brief +but a significant letter from Dinky-Dunk, telling me that he had +"taken over" the Goodhue house in Mount Royal and asking me if I +intended to be its mistress. He has bought the house, apparently, +completely furnished and is getting ready to move into it the first +week in March. + +The whole thing has rather taken my breath away. I don't object to an +ultimatum, but I do dislike to have it come like a bolt from the blue. +I have arrived at my Rubicon, all right, and about everything that's +left of my life, I suppose, will hang on my decision. I don't know +whether to laugh or to cry, to be horrified or hilarious. At one +moment I have a tendency to emulate Marguerite doing the Jewel-Song in +_Faust_. "This isn't _me_! This isn't _me_!" I keep protesting to +myself. But Marguerite, I know, would never be so ungrammatical. And +then I begin to foresee difficulties. The mere thought of leaving Casa +Grande tears my heart. When we go away, as that wise man of Paris +once said, we die a little. This will always seem my home. I could +never forsake it utterly. I dread to forsake it for even a portion of +each year. I am a part of the prairie, now, and I could never be +entirely happy away from it. And to accept that challenge--for however +one may look at it, it remains a challenge--and go to the new home in +Calgary would surely be another concession. And I have been conceding, +conceding, for the sake of my children. How much more can I concede? + +Yet, when all is said and done, I am one of a family. I am not a free +agent. I am chained to the oar for life. When we link up with the race +we have more than the little ring of our own Ego to remember. It is +not, as Dinky-Dunk once pointed out to me, a good thing to get +"Indianized." We have our community obligations and they must be +faced. The children, undoubtedly, would have advantages in the city. +And to find my family reunited would be "_le désir de paraître_." But +I can't help remembering how much there is to remember. I'm humbler +now, it's true, than I once was. I no longer say "One side, please!" +to life, while life, like old Major Elmes on Murray Hill, declines to +vary its course for one small and piping voice. Instead of getting +gangway, I find, I'm apt to get an obliterating thump on the spine. +Heaven knows, I want to do the right thing. But the issue seems so +hopelessly tangled. I have brooded over it and I have even prayed over +it. But it all seems to come to nothing. I sometimes nurse a ghostly +sort of hope that it may be taken out of my hands, that some power +outside myself may intervene to decide. For it impresses me as ominous +that I should be able to hesitate at such a time, when a woman, for +once in her life, should know her own mind, should see her own fixed +goal and fight her way to it. I've been wondering if I haven't ebbed +away into that half-warm impersonality which used to impress me as the +last stage in moral decay. + +But I'm not the fishy type of woman. I know I'm not. And I'm not a +hard-head. I've always had a horror of being hard, for fear my +hardness might in some way be passed on to my Dinkie. I want to keep +my boy kindly and considerate of others, and loyal to the people who +love him. But I balk at that word "loyal." For if I expect loyalty in +my offspring I surely must have it myself. And I stood up before a +minister of God, not so many years ago, and took an oath to prove +loyal to my husband, to cleave to him in sickness and in health. I +also took an oath to honor him. But he has made that part of the +compact almost impossible. And my children, if I go back to him, will +come under his influence. And I can't help questioning what that +influence will be. I have only one life to live. And I have a human +anxiety to get out of it all that is coming to me. I even feel that it +owes me something, that there are certain arrears of happiness to be +made up.... I wish I had a woman, older and wiser than myself, to talk +things over with. I have had the impulse to write to Peter, and tell +him everything, and ask him what I ought to do. But that doesn't +impress me as being quite fair to Peter. And, oddly enough, it doesn't +impress me as being quite fair to Dinky-Dunk. So I'm going to wait a +week or two and let the cream of conviction rise on the pan of +indecision. There's a tiny parliament of angels, in the inner chambers +of our heart, who talk these things over and decide them while we +sleep. + + + + +_Friday the Seventeenth_ + + +We had to dig in, like bears, for two whole days while the first real +snow-storm of the winter raged outside. But the skies have cleared, +the wind has gone, and the weather is crystal-clear again. Dinkie and +Poppsy, furred to the ears, are out on the drifts learning to use the +snow-shoes which Percy and Olga sent down to them for Christmas. +Dinkie has made himself a spear by lashing his broken-bladed +jack-knife to the handle of my headless dutch-hoe and has converted +himself into a stealthy Iluit stalking a polar bear in the form of +poor old Scotty, who can't quite understand why he is being driven so +relentlessly from crevice to Arctic crevice. They have also built an +igloo, and indulged in what is apparently marriage by capture, with +the reluctant bride making her repeated escape by floundering over +drifts piled even higher than the fence-tops. It makes me hanker to +get my own snow-shoes on my moccasined feet again and go trafficking +over that undulating white world of snow, where barb-wire means no +more than a line-fence in Noah's Flood. No one could remain morose, +in weather like this. You must dress for it, of course, since that +arching blue sky has sword-blades of cold sheathed in its velvety soft +azure. But it goes to your head, like wine, and you wonder what makes +you feel that life is so well worth living. + + + + +_Tuesday, the Twenty-First_ + + +The armistice continues. And I continue to sit on my keg of powder and +sing "_O Sole Mio_" to the northern moon. + +I have had Whinstane Sandy build a toboggan-slide out of the old +binder-shed, which has been pretty well blown to pieces by last +summer's wind-storms. He picked out the soundest of the two-by-fours +and made a framework which he boarded over with the best of the +weather-bleached old siding. For when you haven't the luxury of a hill +on your landscape, you can at least make an imitation one. Whinnie +even planed the board-joints in the center of the runway and +counter-sunk every nail-head--and cussed volubly when he pounded his +heavily mittened thumb with the hammer. The finished structure could +hardly be called a thing of beauty. We have only one of the +stable-ladders to mount it from the rear, and instead of toboggans we +have only Poppsy's home-made hand-sleigh and Dinkie's somewhat +dilapidated "flexible coaster." But when water had been carried out +to that smooth runway and the boards had been coated with ice, like +brazil-nuts _glacé_, and the snow along the lower course had been well +packed down, it at least gave you a run for your money. + +The tip-top point of the slide couldn't have been much more than +fourteen or fifteen feet above the prairie-floor, but it seemed +perilous enough when I tried it out--much to the perturbation of +Whinstane Sandy--by lying stomach-down on Dinkie's coaster and letting +myself shoot along that well-iced incline. It was a kingly sensation, +that of speed wedded to danger, and it took me back to Davos at a +breath. Then I tried it with Dinkie, and then with Poppsy, and then +with Poppsy and Dinkie together. We had some grand old tumbles, in the +loose snow, and some unmentionable bruises, before we became +sufficiently expert to tool our sleigh-runners along their proper +trail. But it was good fun. The excitement of the thing, in fact, +rather got into my blood. In half an hour the three of us were covered +with snow, were shouting like Comanches, and were having an altogether +wild time of it. There was climbing enough to keep us warm, for all +the sub-zero weather, and I was finally allowed to escape to the house +only on the promise that I risk my neck again on the morrow. + + + + +_Friday the Twenty-Fourth_ + + +My Dinkie's secret is no longer a secret. It divulged itself to me +to-day with the suddenness of a thunder-clap. _Peter Ketley has been +back at Alabama Ranch for nearly three weeks._ + +I was out with the kiddies this afternoon, having another wild time on +the toboggan-slide, dressed in an old Mackinaw of Dinky-Dunk's buckled +in close around my waist and a pair of Whinnie's heaviest woolen socks +over my moccasins and a mangy old gray-squirrel cap on by head. The +children looked like cherubs who'd been rolled in a flour-barrel, with +their eyes shining and their cheeks glowing like Richmond roses, but I +must have looked like something that had been put out to frighten the +coyotes away. At any rate, there we were, all squealing like pigs and +all powdered from tip to toe with the dry snow and all looking like +Piutes on the war-path. And who should walk calmly about the corner of +the buildings but Peter himself! + +My heart stopped beating and I had to lean against the end of the +toboggan-slide until I could catch my breath. + +He called out, "Hello, youngsters!" as quietly as though he had seen +us all the day before. I said "Peter!" in a strangled sort of whisper, +and wondered what made my knees wabble as I stood staring at him as +though he had been a ghost. + +But Peter was no ghost. He was there before me, in the body, still +smoking his foolish little pipe, wearing the familiar old coonskin cap +and coat that looked as though the moths had made many a Roman holiday +of their generously deforested pelt. He took the pipe out of his mouth +as he stepped over to me, and pulled off his heavy old gauntlet before +he shook hands. + +"Peter!" I repeated in my ridiculous small whisper. + +He didn't speak. But he smiled, a bit wistfully, as he stared down at +me. And for just a moment, I think, an odd look of longing came into +his searching honest eyes which studied my face as though he were +counting every freckle and line and eyelash there. He continued to +X-ray me with that hungry stare of his until I took my hand away and +could feel the blood surging back to my face. + +"It's a long time," he said as he puffed hard on his pipe, apparently +to keep it from going out. The sound of his voice sent a little +thrill through my body. I felt as rattle-headed as a rabbit, and was +glad when Dinkie and Poppsy captured him by each knee and hung on like +catamounts. + +"Where did you come from?" I finally asked, trying in vain to be as +collected as Peter himself. + +Then he told me. He told me as nonchalantly as though he were giving +me a piece of news of no particular interest. He had rather a +difficult book to finish up, and he concluded the quietness of Alabama +Ranch would suit him to a T. And when spring came he wanted to have a +look about for a nest of the whooping crane. It has been rather a +rarity, for some sixteen or seventeen years, this whooping crane, and +the American Museum was offering a mighty handsome prize for a +specimen. Then he was compelled to give his attention to Dinkie and +Poppsy, and tried the slide a couple of times, and announced that our +coaster was better than the chariot of Icarius. And by this time I had +recovered my wits and my composure and got some of the snow off my +Mackinaw. + +"Have I changed?" I asked Peter as he turned to study my face for the +second time. + +"To me," he said as he brushed the snow from his gauntlets, "you are +always adorable!" + +"_Verboten!_" I retorted to that, wondering why anything so foolish +could have the power to make my pulses sing. + +"Why?" he asked, as his eyes met mine. + +"For the same old reason," I told him. + +"Reasons," he said, "are like shoes: Time has the trick of wearing +them out." + +"When that happens, we have to get new ones," I reminded him. + +"Then what is the new one?" he asked, with an unexpectedly solemn look +on his face. + +"My husband has just asked me to join him in Calgary," I said, +releasing my bolt. + +"Are you going to?" he asked, with his face a mask. + +"I think I am," I told him. For I could see, now, how Peter's return +had simplified the situation by complicating it. Already he had made +my course plainer to me. I could foresee what this new factor would +imply. I could understand what Peter's presence at Alabama Ranch would +come to mean. And I had to shut my eyes to the prospect. I was still +the same old single-track woman with a clear-cut duty laid out before +her. There were certain luxuries, for the sake of my own soul's peace, +I could never afford. + +"Why are you going back to your husband?" Peter was asking, with real +perplexity on his face. + +"Because he needs me," I said as I stood watching the children go +racing down the slide. + +"Why?" he asked, with what impressed me as his first touch of +harshness. + +"Must I explain?" I inquired with my own first movement in +self-defense, for it had suddenly occurred to me that any such +explaining would be much more difficult than I dreamed. + +"Of course not," said Peter, changing color a little. "It's only that +I'm so tremendously anxious to--to understand." + +"To understand what?" I questioned, both hoping and dreading that he +would go on to the bitter end. + +"That _you_ understand," was his cryptic retort. And for once in his +life Peter disappointed me. + +"I can't afford to," I said with an effort at lightness which seemed +to hurt him more than it ought. Then I realized, as I stood looking up +into his face, that I was doing little to merit that humble and +magnificent loyalty of Peter's. _He_ would play fair to the end. He +was too big of heart to think first of himself. It was _me_ he was +thinking of; it was _me_ he wanted to see happy. But I had my own road +to go, and no outsider could guide me. + +"It's no use, Peter," I said as I put my mittened hand on his +gauntleted arm without quite knowing I was doing it. And I went on to +warn him that he must not confront me with kindness, that I was a good +deal like an Indian's dog which neither looks for kindness nor +understands it. He laughed a trifle bitterly at that and reminded me, +as he stood staring at me, of a Pribilof seal staring into an Arctic +sun. Then he said an odd thing. "I wish I could make it a bit easier +for you," he remarked as impersonally as though he were meditating +aloud. + +I asked him why he said that. He evasively explained that he thought +it was because I had what the Romans called _constantia_. So I asked +him to explain _constantia_. And he said, with a shrug, that we might +regard it as firm consideration of a question before acting on it. I +explained, at that, that it wasn't a matter of choice, but of +character. He was willing to acknowledge that I was right. But before +that altogether unsatisfactory little debate was over Peter made me +promise him one thing. He has made me promise that before I leave we +have a tramp over the prairie together. And we have agreed that Sunday +would be as good a day as any. + + + + +_Saturday the Twenty-Fifth_ + + +I have sent word to Duncan to expect me in Calgary as soon as I can +get things ready. My decision is made. And it is final. Two ghostly +hands have reached out and turned me toward my husband. One is the +Past. The other is the Proprieties. If life out here were a little +more like the diamond-dyed Westerns, Peter Ketley and Duncan McKail +would fight with hammerless Colts, the victor would throw me over the +horn of his saddle, and vanish in a cloud of dust, while Struthers was +turning Casa Grande into a faro-hall and my two kiddies were busy +holding up the Elk Crossing stage-coach. + +But life, alas, isn't so dramatic as we dream it. It cross-hobbles us +and hog-ties us and leaves us afraid of our own wilted impulses. I +have a terror of failure. And it's plain enough I have only one +mission on God's green footstool. I'm a home-maker, and nothing more. +I'm a home-maker confronted by the last chance to make good at my one +and only calling. And whatever it costs, I'm going to make my husband +recognize me as a patient and long-suffering Penelope.... + +But enough of the rue! To-morrow I'm going snow-shoeing with Peter. +I'm praying that the weather will be propitious. I want one of our +sparkling-burgundy days with the sun shining bright and a nip in the +air like a stiletto buried in rose leaves. For it may be the last time +in all my life I shall walk on the prairie with my friend, Peter +Ketley. The page is going to be turned over, the candle snuffed out, +and the singing birds of my freedom silenced. I have met my Rubicon, +and it must be crossed. But last night, for the first time in a month, +I plastered enough cold cream on my nose to make me look like a +buttered muffin, and rubbed enough almond-oil meal on my arms to make +them look like a miller's. And I've been asking myself if I'm the +sedate old lady life has been trying to make me. There are certain +Pacific Islands, Gershom tells me, where the climate is so stable that +the matter of weather is never even mentioned, where the people who +bathe in that eternal calm are never conscious of the conditions +surrounding them. That's the penalty, I suppose, that humanity pays +for constancy. There are no lapses to record, no deviations to be +accounted for, no tempests to send us tingling into the shelters of +wonder. And I can't yet be quite sure whether this rebellious old +heart of mine wants to be a Pacific Islander or not. + + + + +_Monday the Twenty-Seventh_ + + +Peter and I have had our tramp in the snow. It wasn't a sunny day, as +I had hoped. It was one of those intensely cold northern days without +wind or sun, one of those misted days which Balzac somewhere describes +as a beautiful woman born blind. It was fifty-three below zero when we +left the house, with the smoke going up in the gray air as straight +and undisturbed as a pine-tree and the drifts crunching like dry +charcoal under our snow-shoes. We were woolened and mittened and +capped and furred up to the eyes, however, and I was warmer than I've +been many a time on Boston Common in March, even though we did look +like a couple of deep-sea divers and steamed like fire-engines when we +breathed. + +We tramped until we were tired, swung back to Casa Grande, and Peter +came in for a cup of tea and then trudged off to Alabama Ranch again. +And that was the lee and the long of it, as the Irish say. What did we +talk about? Heaven knows what we didn't talk about! Peter told me +about a rancher named Bidwell, north of The Crossing, being found +frozen to death in a snow-drift, frozen stiff, with the horse still +standing and the rider still sitting upright in the saddle. He said +there was a lot of rot talked about the great clean outdoors. The +sentimentalists found that they naturally felt a bit niftier in fresh +air, but the great outdoors, according to Peter, is an arena of +endless murder and rapine and warfare, and the cleanest acre of forest +or prairie under the sun somewhere has its stains of blood and its +record of cruelty. We talked about Susie and the negative phrasing of +the ten moral laws and the Horned Dinosaur from Sand Hill Creek (whose +bones Peter reckoned to be at least three million years old) and the +marriage customs of the Innuits. And we talked about Matzenauer and +Kreisler and the best cure for chilblains and about Gershom and Poppsy +and Dinkie--but most of all about Dinkie. + +Peter asked me if I'd seen Dinkie's school essays on _The Flag_ and +_The Capture of Quebec_, and rather surprised me by handing over +crumpled copies of the same, Dinkie having proudly despatched these +masterpieces all the way to Philadelphia for his "Uncle Peter's" +approval. It hurt me, for just one foolish fraction of a second, to +think my boy had confidences with an outsider which he could not have +with his own mother. And then I remembered that Peter wasn't an +outsider. I realized how much he had brought into my laddie's life, +how much, in a different way, he had brought into my own. I even tried +to tell him about this. But he stopped me short by saying something in +Latin which he later explained meant "by taking the middle course we +shall not go amiss." So I came back to Casa Grande, not exactly with a +feeling of frustration, but with a feeling of possibilities withheld +and issues deferred. It was a companionable enough tramp, I suppose. +But I'm afraid I was a disappointment to Peter. His gaiety impressed +me as a bit forced. I am slightly mystified by his refusal, while +taking serious things seriously, to take anything tragically. Even at +tea, with all its air of the valedictory hanging over us, he was nice +and gay, like the Christmas beeves the city butchers stick paper +rosettes into, or the circus-band playing like mad while the tumbler +who has had a fall is being carried out to the dressing-tent. Peter +even offhandedly inquired, as he was going, if he might have Scotty to +take care of, provided it was not expedient to take Dinkie's dog +along to Calgary with us.... I'm not quite certain--I may be wrong, +but there are moments, odd earthquakey moments, when I have a +suspicion that Peter will be keeping more than Scotty after we've +trekked off to Calgary! + + + + +_Saturday the Fourth_ + + +This tearing up of roots is a much sorrier business than I had +imagined. And more difficult. I find it hard to know what to take and +what to leave behind. And there is so much to be thought of, so much +to be arranged for, so much to be done. I have had to write Duncan and +tell him I'll be a few days later than I intended. My biggest problem +has been with Whinstane Sandy and Struthers. I called them in and had +a talk with them and told them I wanted them to keep Casa Grande going +the same as ever. Then I made myself into the god from the machine by +calmly announcing the only way things could be arranged would be for +the two of them to get married. + +Struthers, at this suggestion, promptly became as coy as a +partridge-hen. Whinnie, of course, remained Scottish and canny. He +became more shrewdly magnanimous, however, after we'd had a bit of +talk by ourselves. "Weel, I'll tak' the woman, rather than see her +frettin' hersel' to death!" he finally conceded, knowing only too +well he'd nest warm and live well for the rest of his days. He'd been +hoping, he confessed to me, that some day he'd get back to that claim +of his up in the Klondike. But he wasn't so young as he once was. And +perhaps Dinkie, when he was grown to a man, could go up and look after +his rights. 'Twould be a grand journey, he averred with a sigh, for a +high-spirited lad turned twenty. + +"I'll be stayin' with Pee-Wee and the old place here," concluded +Whinstane Sandy, giving me his rough old hand as a pledge. And with +tears in my eyes I lifted that faithful old hand up to my lips and +kissed it. Whinnie, I knew, would die for me. But he would pass away +before he'd be willing to put his loyalty and his courage and his +kind-heartedness into pretty speeches. Struthers, on the other hand, +has become too flighty to be of much use to me in my packing. She has +plunged headlong into a riot of baking, has sent for a fresh supply of +sage tea, and is secretly perusing a dog-eared volume which I have +reason to know is _The Marriage Guide_. + +Gershom, all things considered, is the most dolorous member of our +home circle. He says little, but inspects me with the wounded eyes of +a neglected spaniel. He will stay on at Casa Grande until the Easter +holidays, and then migrate to the Teetzels'. As for Dinkie and Poppsy, +they are too young to understand. The thought of change excites them, +but they have no idea of what they are leaving behind. + +Last night, when I was dog-tired after my long day's work, I +remembered about Dinkie's school-essays and took them out to read. And +having done so, I realized there was something sacred about them. They +gave me a glimpse of a groping young soul reaching up toward the +light. + +"We have a Flag," I read, "to thrill our bones and be prod of and no +man boy woman or girl" (and the not altogether artless _diminuendo_ +did not escape me!) "should never let it drag in the dust. It flotes +at the bow of our ships and waves from the top of most post offices +etc. And now we have a flag and a flag staf in front of our school and +on holdays and when every grate man dies we put said flag up at haf +mast.... It is the flag of the rich and the poor, the flag of our +country which all of whose citizens have a right to fly, the hig" +(obviously meant for _high_) "and the low, the rich and the poor. And +we must not only keep our flag but blazen it still further with deeds +nobely done. If ever you have to shed your blood for your country +remeber its for the nobelest flag that flies the same being an emblen +of our native land to which it represens and stands in high esteem by +the whole people of a country." ... God bless his patriotic little +bones! My bairn knew what he was trying to get at, but it's plain he +didn't quite know how to get there. + +But the drama of the Capture of Quebec plainly put him on easier +ground. For here was a story worth the telling. And what could be more +glorious than the death of Wolfe as I see it through my little +Dinkie's eyes? + +For I read: "The french said Wolfe" (_can_ has first been written and +then scratched out and _would_ substituted) "never get up that rivver +but Wolfe fooled them with a trick by running the french flag up on +his shipps so the french pilots without fear padled out and come abord +when Wolfe took them prissoners and made them pilot the english ships +safe to the iland of Orlens. He wanted to capsture the city of Quebec +without distroiting it. But the clifs were to high and the brave +Montcalm dified Wolfe who lost 400 men and got word Amherst could not +come and so himself took sick and went to bed. But a desserter from +the french gave Wolfe the pass word and when his ships crept further +up the rivver in the dark a french senntry called out qui vive and one +of Wolfe's men who spoke french well ansered la france and the senntry +said to himself they was french ships and let them go on. Next day +Wolfe was better and saw a goat clime up the clifs near the plains of +Abraham and said where a goat could go he could go to. So he forgot +being sick and desided to clime up Wolfe's cove which was not then +called that until later. It was a dark night and they went in row +boats with all the oars mufled. It was a formadible sight that would +have made even bolder men shrink with fear. But it was the brave +Higlanders who lead with their muskits straped to their sholdiers +climing up the steep rock by grabbing at roots of trees and shrubbs +and not a word was wispered but the french senntrys saw the tree +moving and asked qui vive again. The same sholdier who once studdied +hard and lernt french said la france as he had done before and they +got safe to the top and faced the city. At brake of day they stood +face to face, french and english. But Montcalm marched out to cut them +off there and Wolfe lined his men up in a line and said hold your fire +until they are within forty paces away from us. The french caused +many causilties but the english never wavered. Montcalm still on horse +back reseaved a mortal wound, he would of fell off if two of his tall +granadeers hadn't held him up and Wolfe too was shot on the wirst but +went right on. Again he was shot this time more fataly and as they +were laying him down one of the men exclaimed See how they run. Who +run murmurred the dieing Wolfe. The enemy sir replied the man. Then I +die happy said Generral Wolfe and with a great sigh rolled over on his +side and died.... And when the doctor told Montcalm he could only live +a few hours he said God be prased I shall not live to see Quebec fall. +Brave words like those should not be forgoten and what Wolfe said was +just as brave. No more fiting words could be said by anybody than +those he said in the boats with the mufled oars that night that the +paths of glory leed but to the grave." ... + +I have folded up the carefully written pages, reverently, remembering +my promise to return them to Peter. But for a while at least I shall +keep them with me. They have set me thinking, reminding me how time +flies. Here is my little boy, grown into an historian, sagely +philosophizing over the tragedies of life. My wee laddie, expressing +himself through the recorded word.... It seems such a short time ago +that he was taking his first stumbling steps along the dim hallways of +language. I have been turning back to the journal I began shortly +after his birth and kept up for so long, the naïve journal of a young +mother registering her wonder at the unfolding mysteries of life. It +became less minute and less meticulous, I notice, as the years slipped +past, and after the advent of Poppsy and Pee-Wee the entries seem a +bit hurried and often incoherent. But I have dutifully noted how my +Dinkie first said "Ah goom" for "All gone," just as I have fondly +remarked his persistent use of the reiterative intensive, with careful +citations of his "da-da" and his "choo-choo car," and a "bow-wow" as +applied to any living animal, and "wa-wa" for water, and "me-me" for +milk, and "din-din" for dinner, and going "bye-bye" for going to sleep +on his little "tum-tum." I even solemnly ask, forgetting my Max +Müller, what lies at the root of this strange reduplicative process. +Then I come to where I have set down for future generations the +momentous fact that my Dinkie first said "let's playtend" for "let's +pretend," and spoke of "nasturtiums" as "excursions," and announced +that he could bark loud enough to make Baby Poppsy's eyes "bug out" +instead of "bulge out." And I come again to where I have +affectionately registered the fact that my son says "set-sun" for +"sunset" and speaks of his "rumpers" instead of his "rompers," and +coins the very appropriate word "downer" to go with its sister word of +"upper" and describes his Mummy as "_wearing_ Daddy's coffee-cup" when +he really meant _using_ Daddy's coffee-cup. + +It all seems very fond and foolish now, just as at one time it all +seemed very big and wonderful. And I remember schooling my Poppsy to +say "Daddy's all sweet" and how her little tongue, stumbling over the +sibilant, converted it into the non-complimentary "Daddy's all feet," +which my Dinky-Dunk so scowlingly resented. And I have even compiled a +list of Dinkie's earliest "howlers," from the time he was first +interested in Adam and Eve and asked to be told about "The Garden of +Sweden" until he later explained one of Poppsy's crying-spells by +announcing she had dug a hole out by the corral and wanted to bring it +into the house. I used to smile a bit skeptically over these +tongue-twists of children, but now I know they are re-born with each +new generation, the same old turns of thought and the same old kinks +of utterance. I don't know why, but there is even a touch of sadness +about the old jokes now. The patina of time gathers upon them and +mellows them and makes me realize they belong to the past--the past +with its pain and its joy, that can never come back to mortal mothers +again. + + + + +_Monday the Thirtieth_ + + +"We die a little, when we go away." How true it is! By to-morrow we +will be gone. My heart is heavy as lead. I go about, doing things for +the last time, looking at things for the last time, and pretending to +be as matter-of-fact as a tripper breaking camp. But there's a +laryngitis lump in my throat and there are times when I'm glad I'm +almost too busy to think. + +I was hoping that the weather would be bad, as it ought to at this +time of the year, so that I might leave my prairie with some lessened +pang of regret. But the last two days have been miraculously mild. A +Chinook has been blowing, the sky has been a palpitating soft dome of +azure, and a winey smell of spring has crept over the earth.... +To-night, knowing it was the last night, I crept out to say good-by to +my little Pee-Wee asleep in his lonely little bed. It was a perfect +night. The Lights were playing low in the north, weaving together in a +tangle of green and ruby and amethyst. The prairie was very still. +The moonlight lay on everything, thick and golden and soft with +mystery. I knelt beside Pee-Wee's grave, not in bitterness, but bathed +in peace. I knelt there and prayed. + +It frightened me a little, when I looked up, to see Peter standing +beside the little white fence. I thought, at first, that he was a +ghost, he stood so still and he seemed so tall in the moonlight. + +"I'll watch your boy," he said very quietly, "until you come back." + +He made me think of the Old Priest in _The Sorrowful Inheritance_. He +seemed so calmly benignant, so dependable, so safe in his simple +other-worldliness. + +"Oh, Peter!" was all I could say as I moved toward him in the +moonlight. He nodded, as much to himself as to me, as he took my hand +in his. I felt a great ache, which was not really an ache, and a new +kind of longing which never before, in all my life, I had nursed or +known. I must have moved closer to Peter, though I could feel his hand +pull itself away from mine. It made me feel terribly alone in the +world. + +"Aren't you going to kiss me good-by?" I cried out, with my hand on +his shoulder. + +Peter shook his head from side to side, very slowly. + +"_Verboten!_" he said as he put his hand over the hand which I had put +on his shoulder. + +"But I may never come back. Peter!" I whispered, feeling the tears go +slowly down my wet cheek. + +Peter took my unsteady fingers and placed them on the white pickets of +the little rectangular fence. + +"You'll come back," he said very quietly. And when I looked up he had +turned away. + +I could see him walking off in the yellow moonlight with his shoulders +back and his head up. He walked slowly, with an odd wading movement, +like a man walking through water. I was tempted, for a moment, to call +after him. But some power that was not of me or any part of me +prompted me to silence. I stood watching him until he seemed a moving +shadow along the level floor of the world flooded with +primrose-yellow, until he became a shifting stroke of umber on a +background of misty gold. I stood looking after him as he passed away, +out of my sight, and far, far off to the north a coyote howled and +over Casa Grande I could see a thin pennon of chimney-smoke going up +toward Arcturus.... Good-by, Peter, and God bless you.... + +Unlimited, indeed, is the power of Eros. For when I went to slip +quietly into the house, I found Whinnie and Struthers seated together +beside the kitchen range. And Struthers was reading _Tam O'Shanter_ +aloud to her laird. + +"Read slow, noo, lassie, an' tak' it a' in," said the placidly +triumphant voice of Whinstane Sandy, "for it'll be lang before ye ken +its like!" + + + + +_Thursday the Seventeenth_ + + +The migration has been effected ... I am alone in my room, I have two +and three-quarters trunks unpacked, and I feel like a President's wife +the night after Inauguration. It is well past midnight, but I am too +tired and too unsettled to sleep. Things turn out so differently to +what one expects! And all change, to the home-staying heart, can be so +abysmally upsetting!... + +We were a somewhat disheveled and intimidated flock when we emerged +from our train and found Duncan awaiting us with an amazingly big +touring-car which, as he explained with a short laugh at my gape of +wonder, the Barcona Mines would pay for in a week. + +"It's no piker you're pulling with now," he exclaimed as we climbed +stiff and awkward into that deep-upholstered grandeur on wheels. He +said that the children had grown but would have to be togged out with +some new duds--little knowing how I had stayed up until long past +midnight mending and pressing and doing my best to make my bucolic +offspring presentable. And he told me it was _some_ city I had come +to, as I'd very soon see for myself. And it was _some_ shack he'd +corralled for his family, he added with a chuckle of pride. + +I tried to be interested in the skyscrapers he showed me along Eighth +Avenue, and the Palliser, and the concreted subway, and the Rockies, +in the distance, with the wine-glow on their snow-clad peaks. And +while I did my best to shake off the Maud-Muller feeling which was +creeping over me, by studying the tranquillizingly remote +mountain-tops, Duncan confided to me that he had first said: "Fifty +thousand or bu'st!" But two months ago he had amended that to "A +hundred thousand or bu'st!" and now he had his reasons for saying, +with his jaw set: "Just a cool quarter of a million, before I quit +this game!" + +It was for us, I told myself as I looked down at my kiddies, that the +Dour Man behind the big mahogany wheel was fighting. This, I felt, +should bring me happiness, and a new sense of security. And it was +only because my stomach was empty, I tried to assure myself, that my +poor old prairie heart felt that way. I should have been happy, for I +was going to a brand-new home--and it was one of those foot-hill late +afternoons that make you think of the same old razor-blade muffled up +in the same old panne-velvet, an evening of softness shot through with +a steely sharpness. There was a Chinook arch of Irish point-lace still +in the sky, very much like the one I had left behind me, and the sky +itself was a canopy of robin-egg blue _crêpe de chine_ hemmed with +salmon pink. + +But as we whirled up out of the city into the higher ground of some +boulevarded and terraced residential district the evening air seemed +colder and the solemn old Rockies toward the west took on an air of +lonesomeness. It made the thought of home and open fires and quiet +rooms very welcome. The lights came out along the asphalted streets, +spangling the slopes of that sedate new suburb with rectangular lines +of brilliants. Duncan, in answer to the questions of the children, +explained that he was taking the longer way round, so as to give us +the best view of the house as we drove in. + +"Here we are!" he exulted as we slowed down and turned into a crescent +lined with baby poplar and Manitoba maple. + +I leaned out and saw a big new house of tapestry brick, looking oddly +palatial on its imposing slope of rising ground. My husband stopped, +in fact, midway in a foolishly pillared gate that bisected a long +array of cobble-stone walls, so that we might get a look at the +gardens. They seemed very new gardens, but much of their newness was +lost in that mercifully subduing light in which I saw trim-painted +trellises and sepulchral white flower-urns and pergolas not yet +softened with creepers. There was also a large iron fountain, painted +white, which Duncan apparently liked very much, from the way he looked +at it. From two of the chimneys I could see smoke going up in the +quiet air. In the windows I could see lights, rose-shaded and warm, +and beyond the shrubbery somewhere back in the garden a workman was +driving nails. His hammer fell and echoed like a series of +rifle-shots. From the garage chimney, too, came smoke, and it was +plain from the sounds that somebody inside was busy tuning up a +car-engine. + +I sat staring at the grounds, at the cobble-stone walls, at the +tapestry-brick house with the high-shouldered French cornices. It +began to creep over me how it meant service, how it meant protection, +how it meant guarded lives for me and mine, how it stood an amazingly +complicated piece of machinery which took much thought to organize and +much money to maintain. And the mainspring behind it all, I +remembered, was the man sitting at the mahogany wheel so close to me. +Light and warmth and comfort and safety--they were all to come from +the conceiting and the struggling of my Dour Man, fighting for an +empty-headed family who were scarcely worth it. He was, after all, the +stoker down in the hole, and without him everything would stop. So +when I saw that he was studying my face with that intent sidelong +glance of his, I reached over and put my hand on his knee, as I had +done so often, in the old days. + +He looked down, at that, with what was almost an appearance of +embarrassment. + +"I want to play my part," I said with all the earnestness of my +earnest old heart, as he let in his clutch and we started up the +winding drive. + +"It ought to be a considerable part," he said as we drew up under a +bone-white porte-cochère where a small-bodied Jap stood respectfully +impassive and waiting to open the door for us. + +My husband got down out of the car. I sat wondering why I should feel +so much like a Lady Jane Grey approaching the headsman's _makura_. + +"Come on, kids!" Duncan called out with a parade of joviality, like a +cheer-leader who realized that things weren't going just right. For +Dinkie, I could see, was shrinking back in the padded seat. His +underlip was trembling a trifle as he sat staring at the strange new +house. But Poppsy, true little woman that she was, smiled +appreciatively about at the material grandeurs which confronted her. +If she'd had a tail, I'm sure, she'd have been wagging it. And this so +tickled her dad that he lifted her out of the car and carried her +bodily and triumphantly up the steps. + +I waited for Dinkie, whose eye met mine. I did my best to show my +teeth, that he might understand how everything was eventually to be +for the best. But his face was still clouded as we climbed the steps +and passed under the yoke. + +The little Jap, whose name, I have since found out, is Tokudo, bowed a +jack-knife bow and said "_Irashai_" as I passed him. And "_Irashai_" I +have also discovered, is perfectly good Japanese for "Welcome." + +We had dinner at seven. It was a well-ordered meal, but it went off +rather dismally. I was depressed, for reasons I couldn't quite fathom, +and the children were tired, and Duncan, I'm afraid, was a bit +disappointed in us all. Tokudo had brought cocktails for us, and +Duncan, seeing I wasn't drinking mine, stowed both away in his +honorable stomach. He ate heartily, I noticed, and gave scant +appearance of a man pining away with a broken heart. After dinner he +sat back and bit off the end of a cigar. + +"This is my idea of living," he proclaimed as he sent a blue cloud up +toward the rather awful dome-light above the big table. "There's stir +and movement here, all day long. Something more than sunsets to look +at! You'll see--something to fill up your day! Why, night seems to +come before I even know it. And before I'm out of bed I'm brooding +over what's ahead of me for that particular date and day--Say, that +girl of ours is falling asleep in her chair there!" + +So I escaped and put the children to bed. And while thus engaged I +discovered that some of Duncan's new friends were dropping in on him. +I wanted to stay up-stairs, for my head was aching a lot and my heart +just a little, but Duncan called to me from the bottom of the stairs. +So down I went, like a dutiful wife, to the room full of smoke and +talk, where two big men and one very thin woman in a baby-bear motor +coat were drinking Scotch highballs with my lord and master. They were +genial and jolly enough, but I couldn't understand their allusions and +I couldn't see the points to their jokes. And they seemed to stay an +interminable length of time. I was secretly uncomfortable, until they +went, but I became still more uncomfortable after they had gone. + +For as we sat there together, in that oppressive big room, I made +rather an awful discovery. I found that my husband and I had scarcely +anything we could talk about together. So I sat there, like an +alligator in a bayou, wondering why his rather flushed face should be +turned toward me every now and then. + +My heart beat a little faster as I saw him take out his watch and wind +it up. + +"Let's go to bed," he said as he pushed it back in his waistcoat +pocket. My heart stopped beating altogether, for a moment or two. I +felt like a slave-girl in a sheik's tent, like a desert-woman just +sold into bondage. + +It was the smoky air and the highballs, I suppose, which left his eyes +a little bloodshot as he turned slowly about and studied my face. Then +he repeated what he had said before. + +"_I can't!_" I told him, with a foolish surge of terror. + +He sat quite a long time without speaking. I could see the corners of +the Holbein-Astronomer mouth go down. + +"As you say," he finally remarked, with a grim sort of quietness. But +every bit of color had gone from his face. I was glad when Tokudo came +in to take away the glasses. + +Duncan stood up, after the servant had gone again, and bowed to me +very solemnly. + +"_Oyasumi nasi_," he said with a stabilizing ironic smile. + +"What does that mean?" I asked, doing my best to smile back at him. + +"That means 'sleep well,'" explained my husband. "But Tokudo would +probably translate it into 'Condescend to enjoy honorable +tranquillity.'" + +Instead of enjoying honorable tranquillity, however, I am sitting up +into the wee sma' hours of the night, patrolling the gloomy ramparts +of my soul's unrest. + + + + +_Wednesday the Twenty-Third_ + + +This change to the city means a new life to my children. But I can +also see it means new dangers and new influences. The simplicity of +ranch life has vanished. And Dinkie and Poppsy are already getting +acquainted with their neighbors. A Ford truck came within an inch of +running over Poppsy this morning. She has announced a curiosity to +investigate ice-cream sodas, and Dinkie has proclaimed his intention +of going to the movies Saturday afternoon with Benny McArthur, the +banker's son in the next block. On Monday I'm to take my children to +school. "One of the finest school-buildings in all the West," Duncan +has proudly explained. I can't help thinking of Gershom and his little +cubby-hole of a wooden building where he is even now so solemnly and +yet so kind-heartedly teaching the three R's to a gathering of little +prairie outlaws. + +I shall have time on my hands, I see, for Hilton and his wife, our +English gardener-chauffeur and our portly maid-of-all-work, pretty +well cover what the wonderful Tokudo overlooks. And Tokudo _is_ a +wonder. That cat-footed little Jap does the ordering and cooking and +serving; he answers the door and the telephone; he attends to the rugs +and the hardwood floors; he rules over the butler's pantry and +polishes the silver and inspects the linen, and even keeps the keys to +Duncan's carefully guarded wine-cellar, which the mistress of the +house herself has not yet dared to invade. + +My husband seems to be very busy with his coal-mines and his other +interests. He said last night that his idea of happiness is to be so +immersed in his work as to be unconscious of time and undisturbed by +its passing. And he _has_ been happy, in that way. But Time, that +patient remodeler of all things mortal, can still work while we sleep. +And something has been happening, without Duncan quite knowing it. He +has changed. He is older, for one thing. I don't mean that my husband +is an old man. But I can see a number of early-autumnal alterations in +him. He's a trifle heavier and stiffer. He's lost a bit of his +springiness. And he seems to know it, in his secret heart of hearts, +for he tries to make up for that loss with a sort of coerced +blitheness which doesn't always carry. He affects a sort of creaking +jauntiness which sometimes falls short of its aim. When he can't +clear the hurdle, I notice, he has the habit of whipping up his tired +spirits with a cocktail or a highball or a silver-fizz. But he is +preoccupied, at times. And at other times he is disturbingly +short-tempered. He announced this morning, almost gruffly, that we'd +had about enough of this "Dinkie and Poppsy business," and the +children might as well be called by their real names. So I shall make +another effort to get back to "Elmer" and "Pauline Augusta." But I +feel, in my bones, that those pompous appellatives will not be always +remembered. It has just occurred to me that my old habit of calling my +husband "Dinky-Dunk" has slipped away from me. Endearing diminutives, +I suppose, are not elicited by polar bears. + + + + +_Thursday the Thirty-First_ + + +I don't quite know what's the matter with me. I'm like a cat in a +strange garret. I don't seem to be fitting in. I sat at the piano last +night playing "What's this dull town to me, Robin Adair?" And Duncan, +with the fit and natural spirit of the home-booster, actively resented +that oblique disparagement of his new business-center. He believes +implicitly in Calgary and its future. + +As for myself, I am rigidly suspending all judgments. I'm at least +trying to play my part, even though my spirit isn't in it. There are +times when I'm tempted to feel that a foot-hill city of this size is +neither fish nor fowl. It impresses me as a frontier cow-town grown +out of its knickers and still ungainly in its first long trousers. But +I can't help being struck by people's incorruptible pride in their own +community. It's a sort of religious faith, a fixed belief in the +future, a stubborn optimism that is surely something more than +self-interest. It's the Dutch courage that makes deprivation and long +waiting endurable. + +It's the women, and the women alone, who seem left out of the +procession. They impress me as having no big interests of their own, +so they are compelled to _playtend_ with make-believe interests. They +race like mad in the social squirrel-cage, or drug themselves with +bridge and golf and the country club, or take to culture with a +capital C and read papers culled from the Encyclopedias; or spend +their husbands' money on year-old Paris gowns and make love to other +women's mates. The altitude, I imagine, has quite a little to do with +the febrile pace of things here. Or perhaps it's merely because I'm an +old frump from a back-township ranch! + +But I have no intention of trying to keep up with them, for I have a +constitutional liking for quietness in my old age. And I can't engross +myself in their social aspirations, for I've seen a bit too much of +the world to be greatly taken with the internecine jealousies of a +twenty-year-old foot-hill town. My "day" in this aristocratic section +is Thursday, and Tokudo this afternoon admitted callers from seven +closed cars, two landaulets, three Detroit electrics and one hired +taxi. I know, because I counted 'em. The children and I posed like a +Raeburn group and did our best to be respectable, for Duncan's sake. +But he seems to have taken up with some queer people here, people who +drop in at any time of the evening and smoke and drink and solemnly +discuss how a shandygaff should be mixed and tell stories I wouldn't +care to have the children hear. + +There's one couple Duncan asked me to be especially nice to, a Mr. and +Mrs. Murchison. The latter, I find, is usually addressed as "Slinkie" +by her friends, and the former is known as "Cattalo Charley" because +he once formed a joint-stock company which was to make a fortune +interbreeding buffalo and range-cattle, the product of that happy +union being known, I believe, as "cattalo." Duncan calls him a +"promoter," but my earlier impression of him as a born gambler has +been confirmed by the report that he's interested in a lignite +briquetting company, that he's fathering a scheme, not only to raise +stock-yard reindeer in the sub-Arctics but also to grow karakule sheep +in the valleylands of the Coast, that he once sold mummy wheat at +forty dollars a bushel, and that in the old boom days he promoted no +less than three oil companies. And the time will come, Duncan avers, +when that man will be a millionaire. + +As for "Slinkie," his wife, I can't be quite sure whether I like her +or not. I at least admire her audacity and her steel-trap quickness of +mind. She has a dead white skin, green eyes, and most wonderful hair, +hair the color of a well-polished copper samovar. She is an extremely +thin woman who affects sheathe skirts and rather reminds me of a +boa-constrictor. She always reeks of _Apres londre_ and uses a +lip-stick as freely before the world as an orchestra conductor uses a +baton or a street-sweeper a broom. She is nervous and sharp-tongued +and fearless and I thought, at first, that she was making a dead set +at my Duncan. But I can now see how she confronts all men with that +same dangerous note of intimacy. Her real name is Lois. She talks +about her convent days in Belgium, sings _risque_ songs in very bad +French, and smokes and drinks a great deal more than is good for her. +In Vancouver, when informed that she was waiting for a street-car on a +non-stop corner, she sat down between the tracks, with her back to the +approaching car. The motorman, of course, had to come to a +stop--whereupon she arose with dignity and stepped aboard. Duncan has +told me this story twice, and tends to consider Lois a really +wonderful character. I am a little afraid of her. She asked me the +other day how I liked Calgary. I responded, according to Hoyle, that +I liked the clear air and the clean streets and the Rockies looking so +companionably down over one's shoulder. Lois hooted as she tapped a +cigarette end against her hennaed thumb-nail. + +"Just wait until the sand-storms, my dear!" she said as she struck a +match on her slipper-heel. + + + + +_Saturday the Second_ + + +My old friend Gershom has very slyly written a _rondeau_ to me. I have +just found it enclosed in my _Golden Treasury_, which he handed back +to me that last night at Casa Grande. It's the first actual _rondeau_ +I ever had indited to my humble self, and while I'm a bit set up about +it, I can't quite detach from Gershom's lines a vaguely obituarial +atmosphere which tends to depress me. + +I can see that it may not be the best _rondeau_ in the world, but I'm +going to keep it until my bones are dust, for good old Gershom's sake. +And some day, when he marries the nice girl he deserves to marry, and +has a kiddy or two of his own, I'll shame his gray hairs by parading +it before his offspring! I have just been re-reading the lines, in +Gershom's copperplate script. They are as follows: + + _To C. McK._ + + _On Returning Her Copy of the Golden Treasury_ + + This golden book, dear friend, wherein each line + Holds close a charm for knowing eyes to meet, + Holds doubly mystical and doubly sweet + An inner charm no language may define: + + For o'er each page a woman's soul divine + Bent low a space for kindred souls to greet, + And here her eyes were lit with gladness fleet + Because of songs that graced with rare design + This book of thine! + + And now I give back into Beauty's hand + Her borrowed songs, but I shall hold always + Secret and safe from every care's demand, + A flame of light to fill my emptier days, + That quieter fellowship, which made a shrine + This book of thine! + G. B. + + + + +_Tuesday the Fifth_ + + +The weather is balmier, and just a tinge of green is creeping into the +tan of the foot-hill slopes. Spring is coming again. + +I went shopping in the Hudson Bay Store yesterday and found it much +more metropolitan than I had expected. And I find I am three whole +laps behind in that steeplechase known as Style. But I got a raft of +things for Pauline Augusta, and a Boy Scout outfit for my laddie. + +One of the few women I like in Calgary is Dinkie's--I mean +Elmer's--new school-teacher. Her name is Lossie Brown and she is an +earnest-eyed girl who's saving up to go to Europe some day and study +art. She's a trifle shy, and unmistakably moody, but her mind is as +bright as a new pin. And some bright morning, when the rose of +womanhood has really opened, she's going to wake up a howling beauty. +I love her, too, for the interest she has taken in my boy, whom she +reports as getting along much better than she had expected. So I have +asked her to write a little note to Gershom Binks, advising him of +his ex-pupil's advance. For Lossie is a girl I'd like Gershom to know. +And she has done this for me. I ask her over to the house as often as +I can and yesterday I had Dinkie slip a little platinum-banded +fountain-pen, with a card, into the pocket of her rather threadbare +ulster. Duncan, however, is not in the least interested in Lossie. He +despises what he calls insignificant people. + +On my way home from shopping I had Hilton drive me about some of the +less-known parts of the city. And I have been compelled to recast some +of my earlier impressions of Calgary. It is wonderful, in many ways, +and some day, I can see, it will be beautiful, just as Lossie Brown +will some day be beautiful. + +In the first place, it is so happily situated, lying as it does +half-way between the mountains and the plain. And the blue Bow comes +dancing so joyously down from the Rockies and the older city sleeps so +happily in the sunny crook of its valley-arm, while the newer suburbs +seem to boil up and run over the surrounding hills like champagne +bubbling over the rim of a glass. There are raw edges, of course, but +time will eventually attend to these. Now and then, between the +motor-cars, you will see a creaking Red River cart. Next to an +office-building of gray sandstone you're likely to spot what looks +like a squatter's wickyup of rusty galvanized iron. Yesterday, on our +main street where the electric-cars were clanging and the limousines +were throwing their exhaust incense to the gods of the future, I +caught sight of a lonely and motionless figure, isolated in the midst +of a newer world. It was the figure of a Cree squaw, blanketed and +many-wrinkled and unmistakably dirty, blinking at the devil-wagons and +the ceaseless hurry of the white man. And being somewhat Indianized, +as my husband once assured me I was, I could sympathize with that +stolid old lady in the blanket. + +I'm even beginning to find that one can get tired of optimism, +especially when it is being so plainly converted from a psychic +abstraction into a municipal asset. There's a sort of communal +Christian Science in this place which ordains that thought shall not +dwell on such transient evils as drought or black rust or early frost +or hail-storms or money stringencies. And there's a sort of youthful +greediness in people's longing to live all there is of life to live +and to know all there is of life to know. For there is a limit to the +sensations we can digest, just as there is a limit to the meat we can +digest. And out here we have a tendency to bolt more than is good for +us, to bolt it without pausing to get the true taste of it. The women +of this town remind me more and more of mice in an oxygen bell; they +race round and round, drunk with an excitement they can't quite +understand, until they burn up their little lives the same as the mice +burn up their little lungs. + +... I've had a letter from Whinstane Sandy to-day, writing about +seed-wheat and the repairs for the tractor. It seems like a message +from another world. He reports that poor old Scotty is eating again +and no longer mourns day in and day out for his lost master. And Mr. +Ketley has very kindly brought over the liniment for Mudski's +shoulder. ... Whatever I may be, or whatever I may have done, I feel +that I can still cleanse my heart by sacrifice. + + + + +_Friday the Ninth_ + + +One can get out of the habit, apparently, of having children about. My +kiddies, I begin to see, occasionally grate on Duncan. He brought +tears to the eyes of Pauline Augusta yesterday by the way he scolded +her for using a lead-pencil on the living-room woodwork. And the night +before he shouted much strong language at Elmer for breaking a +window-pane in the garage with Benny McArthur's new air-gun. + +Elmer and his father, I'm afraid, have rather grown away from each +other. More than once I've caught Duncan staring at his son and heir +in a puzzled and a slightly frustrated sort of way. And Elmer's soul +promptly becomes _incommunicado_ when his iron-browed pater is in the +neighborhood. + +Duncan is very proud of his grand new house. He is anxious to build a +conservatory out along the southwest wing. But he has asked how long a +conservatory would last with two young mountain-goats gamboling along +its leads.... Lossie, little suspecting the pang she was giving me, +laughingly showed me a manuscript which she found by accident in my +Dinkie's reader. It was a poem, dedicated to "D. O'L." And written in +a stiff little hand I read: + + "Your lips are lined with roses, + Your eyes they shinne like gold + If you call me from the sunlight, + I'll answer from the cold. + But I wonder why, Oh, why, + You stay so far from me? + If you whisper from the prarrie, + I'll call from Calgary." + +"Won't it be wonderful," said Lossie as I sat pondering over those +foolish little lines, "won't it be wonderful, if Dinkie grows up to be +a great poet?" + + + + +_Monday the Eleventh_ + + +Elmer, _alias_ Dinkie, after many days' mourning for his lost Scotty, +is consoling himself, as other men do, with a substitute. Last Friday +he Brought home a flop-eared pup with a drooping tail and an +indefinite ancestry, explaining that he had come into possession of +the aforementioned animal by the duly delivered purchase-price of +thirty-seven cents. + +Remembering Minty and certain matters of the past, I was troubled in +spirit. But I couldn't see why my son shouldn't have an animal to +love. And I have had Hilton fix a little box in one corner of the +garage for Dinkie's new pet, which he has christened Rowdy. + +Rowdy, I now see, is a canine of limited spirit and is not likely to +repeat the offenses of Minty. But Dinkie really loves his new pup, +despite the latter's indubitably democratic ancestry. And I begin to +suspect that my laddie's weakness for mongrels may arise from his +earlier experience with Duncan's blooded bulldog, which he struggled +with for three whole days, fondly and foolishly trying to teach that +stolid animal the art of "pointing." + +On Saturday Dinkie smuggled the verminous Rowdy to the upper +bathroom and gave him a thorough but quite unrelished soaping ... +Dinkie, by the way, is now a "cub" in the Boy Scouts and after +adorning himself in khaki goes off on hikes and takes lessons in +woodcraft. Saturday the Scouts of his school marched behind a real +band and Lossie and I sat in the car waiting for my laddie to appear. +He wiggled one hand, and smiled sheepishly, as he caught sight of us. +But he kept "eyes front" and refused to give any further sign as he +marched bravely on behind that brave music. He is learning the law +of the pack. For some first frail ideas of service are beginning +to incubate in that egoistic little bean of his. And he's suffering, +I suppose, the old contest between the ancestral lust to kill and +the new-born inclination to succor and preserve. That means he may +some day be "a gentleman." And I've a weakness for that old Newman +definition of a gentleman as one who never inflicts pain--"tender +towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful +towards the absurd"--conducting himself toward his enemy as if he +were some day to be his friend. And I also wish there were a few +more of them in this hard old world of ours! + +Speaking of gentlemen, there's a Captain Goodhue here whom I rather +like. Lois Murchison brought us together in the tea-room of the +Palliser. In more ways than one he reminds me of Peter. But Captain +Goodhue is a much older man, and is English, coming from a very +excellent family in Sussex. He's one of those iron-gray ex-Army men +who still believe in a monocle and can be loyal to a queen even though +she wears a basque with darts in it. And he doesn't talk to a woman +with that ragging air of condescension which seems to be peculiar to +western American civilization. He is courteous and thoughtful and +sincere, though I noticed that he winced a trifle when I suddenly +remembered, as he was taking his departure, that the McKails were +living in what must have once been his house. He blinked, like a +well-groomed old eagle, when I reminded him of this. I never dreamed, +of course, that the subject would be painful to him. But it was an +honor, he acknowledged with a bow, to pass his household gods on to a +lady to whom so much had already been given. + +When I asked Lois about it, later on, she rather indifferently +acknowledged that the old gentleman had been making a mess of his +different business ventures. He was much better at golf than getting +in on the ground-floor of a land deal. He was too old fogy, said +Slinkie, to make good in the West. He still kept his head up, but +they'd pretty well picked him to the bones.... Lois, by the way, +describes me as something new in her menagerie and drops in to see me +at the most unexpected moments. Then her tongue goes like a +mower-knife. She is persuaded that I should permanent-wave my hair, +lower my waist-line, and go in for amethysts. "And interest yourself, +my dear, in an outside man or two," she has sagely advised me. "For +husbands, you'll find, always accept you at the other mutt's +valuation!" + +I was tempted to make her open her jade-green eyes, for a moment, by +telling her I was already interested in an outside man or two and that +my lord and master hadn't been much influenced by the extraneous +appreciations. But I'm a little afraid of Slinkie and her serpent's +tongue. And I'm a little afraid of this new circle into which my +Duncan has so laboriously engineered himself. They more and more +impress on my simple old prairie soul that the single-track woman is +the woman who gets most out of life, that there's nothing really +great and nothing really enduring that is not built on loyalty and +truth. Character is Fate, as I once before inscribed in this book of +my life. And I've been sitting up to-night, while the eternal bridge +game is going on below, asking myself if all is well with Chaddie +McKail. Have I, or have I not, conceded too much? Am I turning into +nothing more than a mush of concession? Haven't I been bribed by +comfort, and blinded to a situation which I am now almost afraid to +face? Haven't I been selfishly scheming for the welfare of my children +and endangering all their future and my own by the price I am paying? +Haven't I been crazily manning a rickety old pump, trying to keep +afloat a family hulk whose seams are wide open and whose timbers are +water-logged? And how long can this sort of thing go on? And what will +be the end of it? + +I try to warn myself not to smash my goods to kill a rat, as the +Chinese say. I try to flatter myself that I am not letting +circumstances stampede me into any hasty decision. There's many a +woman, I suppose, with a husband whose legal promise has outlived his +loyalty. But all is not well here about my heart. I know that, by the +way it keeps sending up little trial-balloons, to see which way the +wind is really blowing. + +... And Sunday night Cattalo Charlie went home quite drunk. And our +local member, emboldened by his seventh highball, offhandedly invited +me to accompany him on a little run up to Banff, stabbing me with a +hurt look when I told him I'd see when Duncan could get away from his +work.... + +I wonder if spring is coming to Casa Grande? And at Alabama Ranch? And +are the pussy-willows showing in the slough-ends? And why doesn't +Peter Ketley ever write to me? + + + + +_Saturday the Sixteenth_ + + +Lossie and Gershom, I find, have drifted into the habit of writing to +each other. It is, of course, all purely platonic and pedagogic, +arising out of a common interest in my Dinkie's academic advancement. +But Lossie borrowed Dinkie this morning to have a photograph taken +with him, one copy of which she has very generously promised to send +on to Gershom.... Struthers has sent me a very satisfactory report +from Casa Grande, which I dreamed last night had burned to the ground, +compelling me and my kiddies to live in the old prairie-schooner, +laboriously pulled about the prairie by Tithonus and Calamity Kate. +And when I applied at Peter's door for a handful of meal for my +starving children, he called me worse than a fallen woman and drove me +off into the wilderness. + +Duncan asked me to-day if I'd motor up to the mines with him for the +week-end. I had to tell him that I'd promised to take Elmer and +Pauline Augusta to hear Kathleen Parlow and that it wouldn't seem +quite fair to break my word. Duncan said that I was the best judge of +that. Then he slammed a drawer shut and asked me, in his newer manner, +how long I intended to pull this iceberg stuff. "For I can't see," he +concluded after calling out for Tokudo to bring his hat and coat, +"that I'm getting such a hell of a lot out of this arrangement!" + +I asked him, as quietly as I could, what he expected of me. But I +could feel my heart pounding quick against my ribs. I am not, and +never pretended to be, any stained-glass saint. And there were a few +things I felt it was about time to unload. But Tokudo cat-footed back +with the coat, and I could hear Lossie's clear laugh as she came in +through the front door with the returning Dinkie, and some inner voice +warned me to hold my peace. So Duncan and I merely stood there staring +at each other, for a moment or two, across an abysmal and unbridgeable +gulf of silence. Then he strode out to his car without as much as a +howdy-do to the startled and slightly mystified Lossie. + + + + +_Monday the Eighteenth_ + + +I have just learned that we were blackballed from the Country Club. My +husband, at least, has met with that experience. + +It was Lois who let the cat out of the bag. She wasn't clear on all +the details, but it was that old has-been of a Goodhue who was at the +bottom of it all, according to the lady known as Slinkie. Duncan and +he had clashed, from the first. Then Duncan had bought up his paper, +and compelled him to mortgage his home. It was because of something to +do with the Barcona Mines directorate, Lois thought, that Captain +Goodhue had had Duncan blackballed when he applied for membership in +the Country Club, the Captain being vice-president of the original +holding company. Lois laughed none too pleasantly when she added that +her Charley and my Duncan had joined hands to go after the old man's +scalp. And they had got it. They turned him inside out, before they +got through with him. They took his fore-lock and his teepee and his +last string of wampum. And the old snob, of course, would never +forgive them. + +... They took his fore-lock, and his teepee ... And it was Chaddie +McKail and her bairns who were now housing warm in that captured +teepee! And all this toiling and moiling, on the part of my husband, +all this scheming and intriguing and juggling with figures, had been a +campaign for power, a plotting and working to get even with this +haughty old enemy who could carry his defeat so lightly! To be +blackballed like that, I remembered, was to be proclaimed not a +gentleman. And it must have cut deep. At one time, I suppose, Duncan +would have called his monocled captain out. But men seem to fight +differently nowadays. They fight differently, but no less grimly. And +Duncan, whether it is a virtue or a vice in his make-up, would always +be a fighter.... Yet I have no sense of gratitude to Lois Murchison +for depositing her painful truths in my lap. She warned me, in her +artless soprano, that there wasn't much good in sentimentalizing the +situation. But she has thrown a shadow across the house which I was +trying to make into a home. Without quite knowing it, she has +cheapened her life-mate in my eyes. Without quite intending it, she +has left my own husband more ignominious than he once stood. I was +trying hard to school myself into a respect for his material +successes. I was struggling to excuse a great many things by the +engrossing nature of his work. But the motive behind all his efforts +seemed suddenly a sordid one, in many ways a mean one. + +I keep remembering what Lois said about not sentimentalizing a +situation. But I'm not yet such a mush of concession that I can't tell +black from white. And there's some part of us, some vague but +unescapable part of us, which we must respect, otherwise we have no +right to walk God's good earth.... + +I want to get away, for a day or two, to think things out. I think, +before Duncan gets back to-morrow, I shall take Poppsy and run up to +Banff. I may get my view-point back. And the mountain quietness may do +me good.... + +I keep having that same dull ache of disappointment which came to me +as a girl, after I'd idolized a great man called Meredith and after +I'd almost prayed to a great poet called Browning, on finding that one +was so imperfectly monogamous and that the other philandered and +talked foolishly to women. I had thrust my girlish faith in their +hands, as so often befalls with the young, and they had betrayed +it.... But for the second time since I married, I have been reading +_Modern Love_. And I can almost forgive the Apollo of Box Hill for +that betrayal which he knew nothing about. + + + + +_Thursday the Twenty-Eighth_ + + +This is Thursday the twenty-eighth of April. I want to be sure of +that. For there are very few things I can be sure of now. + +The bottom has fallen out of my world. I sit here, telling myself to +be calm. But it's not easy to sit quiet when you face the very worst +that all life could confront you with. _My Dinkie has run away._ + +My boy has left me, has left his home, has vanished like smoke into +the Unknown. He is gone and I have no trace of him. + +I find it hard to write. Yet I _must_ write, for the mere expression +of what I feel tends to ease the ache. It helps to keep me sane. And +already I realize I was wrong when I wrote "the very worst that all +life could confront you with." For my laddie, after all, is not dead. +He must still be alive. And while there's life, there's hope. + +I got back from Banff yesterday morning about nine, and Hilton was +there with the car to meet me, as I had told him to be. I was anxious +to know at once if everything was all right, but I found it hard to +put a question so personal before that impersonal-eyed Englishman. So +I strove to give my interrogation an air of the casual by offhandedly +inquiring: "How's Rowdy, Hilton?" + +"Dead, ma'am," was his prompt reply. + +This rather took my breath away. + +"Do you mean to say that Rowdy is _dead_?" I insisted, noticing +Poppsy's color change as she listened. + +"Killed, ma'am," said the laconic Hilton. + +"By whom?" I demanded. + +"Mr. Murchison, ma'am," was the answer. + +"How?" I asked, feeling my vague dislike for that particular name +sharpen up to something dangerously like hatred. + +"He always comes up the drive a bit fast-like, ma'am. He hit the pup, +and that was the end of him!" + +"Does Dinkie know?" was my first question, after that. + +"He _saw_ it, ma'am," admitted my car-driver. + +"Saw what?" + +"Saw Mr. Murchison throw the dog over the wall into the brush!" + +"What did he say?" + +"He swore a bit, ma'am, and then laughed," admitted Hilton, after a +pause. + +"Dinkie laughed?" I cried, incredulous. + +"No; Mr. Murchison, ma'am," explained Hilton. + +"What did Dinkie say?" I insisted. And again the man on the +driving-seat remained silent a moment or two. + +"It was what he _did_, ma'am," he finally remarked. + +"What did he do?" I demanded. + +"Ran into the house, ma'am, and snatched the icepick off the kitchen +table. Then he went to the big car like a mad 'un, he did. Pounded +holes in every blessed tire with his pick!" + +"And then what?" I asked, with my heart up in my throat. + +Hilton waited until he had taken a crowded corner before answering. + +"Then he found the dead dog, ma'am, and bathed it, and borrowed the +garden spade from me. Then he took it somewheres back in the ravine +and buried it. I gave him the tool-box off the old roadster, to put +what was left of the pup in." + +"And then?" I prompted, with a quaver in my voice I couldn't control. + +"He met Mr. Murchison coming out and he called him w'at I'd not like +to repeat, ma'am, until Mr. McKail stepped out to see what was wrong, +and interfered." + +"_How_ did he interfere?" was my next question. + +"By taking the lad into the house, ma'am," was my witness's retarded +reply. + +"Then what happened?" I exacted. + +I waited, knowing what was coming, but I dreaded to hear it. + +"He gave him a threshing, ma'am," I heard Hilton's voice saying, far +away, as though it came to me over a long-distance telephone on a wet +night. + +I sat rigid as we mounted American Hill. I sat rigid as we swerved in +through the ridiculous manor-like gate and up the winding drive and in +under the ugly new porte-cochère. I didn't even wait for Poppsy as I +got out of the car. I didn't even speak to Tokudo as he ran mincingly +to take my things. I walked straight to the breakfast-room where I saw +my husband sitting at the end of the oblong white table, stirring a +cup of coffee with a spoon. + +"Where's Dinkie?" I asked, trying to keep my voice low but not quite +succeeding. + +Duncan looked up at me with a coldly meditative eye. + +"Where he usually is at this time of day," he finally answered. + +"Where?" I repeated. + +"At school, of course," admitted my husband as he reached out for a +piece of buttered toast. He was making a pretense at being very +tranquil-minded. But his hand, I noticed, wasn't so steady as it might +have been. + +"Is he all right?" I demanded, with my voice rising in spite of +myself. + +"Considerably better, I imagine, than he has been for some time," was +the deliberate answer from the man with the bloodshot eyes at the end +of the table. + +"What do you mean by that?" I asked. And any one of intelligence, I +suppose, could see I was making that question a challenge. + +"I mean that since you saw him last he's had a damned good whaling," +said Duncan, with his jaw squared, so that he reminded me of a +King-Lud bulldog. + +I paid no attention to Tokudo, who came into the room to repeat that +his master was wanted at the telephone. + +"Do you mean you struck that child?" I demanded, leaning on the table +and looking straight into his eyes, which met mine quite unabashed, +and with an air of mockery about them. + +My husband nodded as he pushed back his chair. + +"He got a good one," he asserted as he rose to his feet and rather +leisurely brushed a crumb or two from his vest-front. He could even +afford to smile as he said it. My expression, I suppose, would have +made any man smile. But there was something maddening in his mockery, +at such a moment. There was something gratuitously cruel in his parade +of unconcern. Yet, oddly enough, as I looked at his slightly blotched +face I couldn't help remembering that that was the face I had once +kissed and held close against my cheek, had _wanted_ to hold against +my cheek. And now I hated it. + +I had to wait and cast about for words of hatred strong enough to +carry the arrows of enmity which nothing could stop me from +delivering. But while I waited Tokudo announced for the third time +that my husband was wanted at the telephone. And a very simple thing +happened. My husband answered his call. + +I saw Duncan turn and walk out of the room. I could hear his steps in +the hallway, loud on the waxed hardwood and low on the rugs. I could +hear his deliberated chest-tones as he talked over the wire, talked +quietly and earnestly, talked me and my hatred out of his head and out +of his world. And I realized, as I sat there at the table-end with my +gloves twisted up under my hands and my heart even more twisted up +under my ribs, that it was all useless, that it was all futile. He was +beyond the reach of my resentment. We were in different worlds, +forevermore. + +I was still sitting there when he looked in at the door, with his hat +and coat on, on his way out. I could feel him there, without directly +seeing him. And I could feel, too, that he wanted to say something. +But I declined to lift my head, and I could hear the door close as he +went out to the waiting car. + +I sat there for a long time, thinking about my Dinkie. Twice I almost +surrendered to the impulse to telephone to Lossie Brown. But I knew it +would be no easy matter to get in touch with her. And in two hours it +would be twelve, and any minute after that my boy would be home again. +I tried to cross-examine Tokudo, but I could get nothing out of that +tight-lipped Jap. I watched the clock. I noticed Hilton, when he got +back, raking blood-stains off the gravel of the driveway. I wandered +about, like a lost turkey-hen, trying to dramatize my meeting with +Dinkie, doing my best to cooper together some incident which might +keep our first minute or two together from being too hard on my poor +kiddie. I heard the twelve o'clock whistles, at last, and then the +Westminster-chimes of the over-ornate clock in the library announce +that noon had come. And still the minutes dragged on. + +And when the tension was becoming almost unbearable I heard a step on +the gravel and my heart started to pound. + +But instead of Dinkie, it was Lossie, Lossie with smiling lips and +inquiring brown eyes and splashes of rose in her cheeks from rapid +walking. + +"Where's Dinkie?" I asked. + +She stopped short, still smiling. + +"That's exactly what I was going to ask?" I heard her saying. Then her +smile faded as she searched my face. "There's--there's nothing +happened, has there?" + +I groped my way to a pillar of the porte-cochère and leaned against +it. + +"Didn't Dinkie come to school this morning?" I asked as the earth +wavered under my feet. + +"No," acknowledged Lossie, still searching my face. And a frown of +perplexity came into her own. + +I knew then what had happened. I knew it even before I went up to +Dinkie's room and started my frantic search through his things. I +could see that a number of his more treasured small possessions were +gone. I delved forlornly about, hoping that he might have left some +hidden message for me. But I could find nothing. I sat looking at his +books and broken toys, at the still open copy of _The Count of Monte +Cristo_ which he must have been poring over only the night before, at +his neatly folded underclothes and the little row of gravel-worn +shoes. They took on an air of pathos, an atmosphere of the memorial. +Yet, oddly enough, it was Lossie, and Lossie alone, who broke into +tears. The more she cried, in fact, the calmer I found myself +becoming, though all the while that dead weight of misery was hanging +like lead from my heart. + +I went at once to the telephone and called up Duncan's office. He was +still there, though I had to wait several minutes before I could get +in touch with him. + +I had thought, at first, that he would be offhandedly skeptical at the +message which I was sending him over the wire, the message that my boy +had run away. He might even be flippantly indifferent, and remind me +that much worse things could have happened. + +But I knew at once that he was genuinely alarmed at the news which I'd +given him. It apparently staggered him for a moment. Then he said in +his curt telephonic chest-tones, "I'll be up at the house, at once." + +He came, before I'd even completed a second and more careful search. +His face was cold and non-committal enough, but his color was gone and +there was a look that was almost one of contrition in his troubled +eyes, which seemed unwilling to meet mine. He questioned Lossie and +cross-examined Hilton and Tokudo, and then called up the Chief of +Police. Then he telephoned to the different railway stations, and +carried Lossie off in the car to the McArthurs', to interview Benny, +and came back an hour later with that vague look of frustration still +on his face. + +He sat down to luncheon, but he ate very little. He was silent for +quite a long time. + +"Your boy's all right," he said in a much softer voice than I had +expected from him. "He's big enough to look after himself. And we'll +be on his trail before nightfall. He can't go far." + +"No; he can't go far," I echoed, trying to fortify myself with the +knowledge that he must have taken little more than a dollar from the +gilded cast-iron elephant which he used as a bank. + +"I don't want this to get in the papers," explained my husband. +"It's--it's all so ridiculous. I've put Kearney and two of his men on +the job. He's a private detective, and he'll keep busy until he gets +the boy back." + +Duncan got up from the table, rather heavily. He stood hesitating a +moment and then stepped closer to my chair. + +"I know it's hard," he said as he put a hand on my shoulder. "But +it'll be all right. We'll get your boy back for you." + +I didn't speak, because I knew that if I spoke I'd break down and make +an idiot of myself. My husband waited, apparently expecting me to say +something. Then he took his hand away. + +"I'll get busy with the car," he said with a forced matter-of-factness, +"and let you know when there's any news. I've wired Buckhorn and sent word +to Casa Grande--and we ought to get some news from there." + +But there was no news. The afternoon dragged away and the house seemed +like a tomb. And at five o'clock I did what I had wanted to do for +six long hours. I sent off a forty-seven word telegram to Peter +Ketley, telling him what had happened.... + +Duncan came back, at seven o'clock, to get one of the new photographs +of Dinkie and Lossie for identification purposes. They had rounded up +a small boy at Morley and Kearney was motoring out to investigate. +We'd know by midnight.... + +It is well after midnight, and Duncan has just had a phone-message +from Morley. The little chap they had rounded up was a Barnado boy +fired with a sudden ambition to join his uncle in the gold-fields of +Australia. Somewhere, in the blackness of this big night, my homeless +Dinkie is wandering unguarded and alone. + + + + +_Friday the Twenty-Ninth_ + + +I have had no word from Peter.... I've had no news to end the ache +that pins me like a spear-head to the wall of hopelessness. Duncan, I +know, is doing all he can. But there is so little to do. And this +world of ours, after all, is such a terrifyingly big one. + + + + +_Saturday the Thirtieth_ + + +I was called to the phone before breakfast this morning and it was the +blessed voice of Peter I heard from the other end of the wire. My +telegram had got out to him from Buckhorn a day late. But he had no +definite news for me. He was quite fixed in his belief, however, that +Dinkie would be bobbing up at his old home in a day or two. + +"The boy will travel this way," he assured me. "He's bound to do that. +It's as natural as water running down-hill!" + +Duncan asked me whom I'd been talking to, and I had to tell him. His +face clouded and the familiar quick look of resentment came into his +eyes. + +"I can't see what that Quaker's got to do with this question," he +barked out. But I held my peace. + + + + +_Sunday the First_ + + +I have found a message from my Dinkie. I came across it this morning, +by accident. It was in my sewing-basket, the basket made of birch-bark +and stained porcupine quills and lined with doe-skin, which I'd once +bought from a Reservation squaw in Buckhorn with a tiny papoose on her +back. Duncan had upbraided me for passing out my last five-dollar bill +to that hungry Nitchie, but the poor woman needed it. + +My fingers were shaking as I unfolded the note. And written there in +the script I knew so well I read: + + "Darligest Mummsey: + + I am going away. But dont worry about me for I will be alright. I + couldn't stay Mummsey after what hapened. Some day I will come + back to you. But I'm not as bad as all that. I'll love you always + as much as ever. I can take care for myself so don't worry, + please. And please feed my two rabits reglar and tell Benny I'll + save his jacknife and rember every day I'm rembering you. X X X X + X X X + + Your aff'cte son, + + DINKIE." + +It seemed like a voice from the dead, it was bittersweet consolation, +and, in a way, it stood redemption of Dinkie himself. I'd been +upbraiding him, in my secret heart of hearts, for his silence to his +mother. That's a streak of his father in him, had been my first +thought, that unthinking cruelty which didn't take count of the +anguish of others. But he hadn't forgotten me. Whatever happens, I +have at least this assuaging secret message from my son. And some day +he'll come back to me. "Ye winna leave me for a', laddie?" I keep +saying, in the language of old Whinstane Sandy. And my mind goes back, +almost six years at a bound, to the time he was lost on the prairie. +That time, I tell myself, God was good to me. And surely He will be +good to me again! + + + + +_Tuesday the Third_ + + +We still have no single word of our laddie.... They all tell me not to +worry. But how can a mother keep from worrying? I had rather an awful +nightmare last night, dreaming that Dinkie was trying to climb the +stone wall about our place. He kept falling back with bleeding +fingers, and he kept calling and calling for his mother. Without being +quite awake I went down to the door in my night-gown, and opened it, +and called out into the darkness: "Is anybody there? Is it you, +Dinkie?" + +My husband came down and led me back to bed, with rather a frightened +look on his face. + +They tell me not to worry, but I've been up in Dinkie's room turning +over his things and wondering if he's dead, or if he's fallen into the +hands of cruel people who would ill-use a child. Or perhaps he has +been stolen by Indians, and will come back to me with a morose and +sullen mind, and with scars on his body.... + + + + +_Thursday the Fifth_ + + +What a terrible thing is loneliness. The floors of Hell, I'm sure, are +paved with lonesome hearts. Day by day I wait and long for my laddie. +Always, at the back of my brain, is that big want. Day by day I brood +about him and night by night I dream of him. I turn over his old +playthings and his books, and my throat gets tight. I stare at the +faded old snap-shots of him, and my heart turns to lead. I imagine I +hear his voice, just outside the door, or just beyond a bend in the +road, and a two-bladed sword of pain pushes slowly through my +breast-bone. Dear old Lossie comes twice a day, and does her best to +cheer me up. And Gershom has offered to give up his school and join in +the search. Peter Ketley, he tells me, has been on the road for a +week, in a car covered with mud and clothes that have never come off. + + + + +_Friday the Sixth_ + + +There is no news of my Dinkie. And _that_, I remind myself, is the +only matter that counts. + +Lois Murchison drove up to-day in her hateful big car. She did not +find me a very agreeable hostess, I'm afraid, but curled up like a +nonchalant green snake in one of my armchairs and started to smoke and +talk. She asked where Duncan was and I had to explain that he'd been +called out to the mines on imperative business. And that started her +going on the mines. Duncan, she said, should clean up half a million +before he was through with that deal. He had been very successful. + +"But don't you feel, my dear," she went on with quiet venom in her +voice, "that a great deal of his success has depended on that +bandy-legged little she-secretary of his?" + +"Is she that wonderful?" I asked, trying to seem less at sea than I +was. + +"She's certainly wonderful to him!" announced the woman known as +Slinkie. And having driven that poisoned dart well into the flesh, +she was content to drop her cigarette-end into the ash-receiver, reach +for her blue-fox furs, and announce that she'd have to be toddling on +to the hair-dresser's. + +Lois Murchison's implication, at that moment, didn't bother me much, +for I had bigger troubles to occupy my thoughts. But the more I dwell +on it, the more I find myself disturbed in spirit. I resent the idea +of being upset by a wicked-tongued woman. She has, however, raised a +ghost which will have to be laid. To-morrow I intend to go down to my +husband's office and see his secretary, "to inspect the whaup," as +Whinnie would express it, for I find myself becoming more and more +interested in her wonderfulness.... Peter sent me a hurried line or +two to-day, telling me to sit tight as he thought he'd have news for +me before the week was out. + +I suspect him of trying to trick me into some forlorn new lease of +hope. But I have pinned my faith to Peter--and I know he would not +trifle with anything so sacred as mother-love. + + + + +_Saturday the Seventh_ + + +There is no news of my Dinkie.... But there is news of another +nature. + +Between ten and eleven this morning I had Hilton motor me down to +Duncan's office in Eighth Avenue. It struck me as odd, at first, that +I had never been there before. But Duncan, I remembered, had never +asked me, the domestic fly, to step into his spider's parlor of +commerce. And I found a ridiculous timidity creeping over me as I went +up in the elevator, and found the door-number, and saw myself +confronted by a cadaverous urchin in horn-rimmed specs, who thrust a +paper-covered novel behind his chair-back and asked me what I wanted. +So I asked him if this was Mr. McKail's office. + +"Sure," he said in the established vernacular of the West. + +"What is your name, little boy?" I inquired, with the sternest brand +of condescension I could command. + +The young monkey drew himself up at that and flushed angrily. "Oh, I +don't know as I'm so little," he observed, regarding me with a +narrowing eye as I stepped unbidden beyond the sacred portals. + +"Where will I find Mr. McKail's secretary?" I asked, noticing the door +in the stained-wood partition with "Private" on its frosted glass. The +youth nodded his head toward the door in question and crossed to a +desk where he proceeded languidly to affix postage-stamps to a small +pile of envelopes. + +I hesitated for a moment, as though there was something epochal in the +air, as though I was making a step which might mean a great deal to +me. And then I stepped over to the door and opened it. + +I saw a young woman seated at a flat-topped desk, with a gold-banded +fountain-pen in her fingers, checking over a column of figures. She +checked carefully on to the end of her column, and then she raised her +head and looked at me. + +Her face stood out with singular distinctness, in the strong +side-light from the office-window. And the woman seated at the +flat-topped desk was Alsina Teeswater. + +I don't know how long I stood there without speaking. But I could see +the color slowly mount and recede on Alsina Teeswater's face. She put +down her fountain-pen, with much deliberation, and sat upright in her +chair, with her barricaded eyes every moment of the time on my face. + +"So this has started again?" I finally said, in little more than a +whisper. + +I could see the girl's lips harden. I could see her fortifying herself +behind an entrenchment of quietly marshaled belligerency. + +"It has never stopped, Mrs. McKail," she said in an equally low voice, +but with the courage of utter desperation. + +It took some time, apparently, for that declaration to filter through +to my brain. Everything seemed suddenly out of focus; and it was hard +to readjust vision to the newer order of things. But I was calmer, +under the circumstances, than I expected to be. + +"I'm glad I understand," I finally admitted. + +The woman at the desk seemed puzzled. Then she looked from me to her +column of figures and from her column of figures to the huddled roofs +and walls of the city and the greening foot-hills and the solemn white +crowns of the Rockies behind them. + +"Are you quite sure, Mrs. McKail, that you do understand?" she asked +at last, with just a touch of challenge in the question. + +"Isn't it quite simple now?" I demanded. + +She found the courage to face me again. + +"I don't think this sort of thing is ever simple," she replied, with +much more emotion than I had expected of her. + +"But it's at least clear how it must end," I found the courage to +point out to her. + +"Is that clear to _you_?" demanded the woman who was stepping into my +shoes. It seemed odd, at the moment, that I should feel vaguely sorry +for her. + +"Perhaps you might make it clearer," I prompted. + +"I'd rather Duncan did that," she replied, using my husband's first +name, obviously, without knowing she had done so. + +"Wouldn't it be fairer--for the two of us--now? Wouldn't it be +cleaner?" I rather tremulously asked of her. + +She nodded and stared down at the sheet covered with small columns of +figures. + +"I don't know whether you know it or not," she said with a studied +sort of quietness, "but last week Mr. McKail began making arrangements +to establish a residence in Nevada. He will have to live there, of +course, for at least six months, perhaps even longer." + +I could feel this sinking in, like water going through +blotting-paper. The woman at the desk must have misinterpreted my +silence, for she was moved to say, in a heavier effort at +self-defense, "He _knew_, of course, that you cared for some one +else." + +I looked at her, as though she were a thousand miles away. I stood +there impressed by the utter inadequacy of speech. And the thing that +puzzled me was that there was an air of honesty about the woman. She +still so desperately clung to her self-respect that she wanted me to +understand both her predicament and her motives. I could hear her +explaining that my husband had no intention of going to Reno, but +would live in Virginia City, where he was taking up some actual mining +interests. Such things were not pleasant, of course. But this one +could be put through without difficulty. Mr. McKail had been assured +of that. + +I tried to pull myself together, wondering why I should so suddenly +feel like a marked woman, a pariah of the prairies, as friendless and +alone as a leper. Then I thought of my children. And that cleared my +head, like a wind sweeping clean a smoky room. + +"But a case has to be made out," I began. "It would have to be proved +that I----" + +"There will be no difficulty on that point, Mrs. McKail," went on the +other woman as I came to a stop. "Provided the suit is not opposed." + +The significance of that quietly uttered phrase did not escape me. Our +glances met and locked. + +"There are the children," I reminded her. And she looked a very +commercialized young lady as she sat confronting me across her many +columns of figures. + +"There should be no difficulty there--_provided_ the suit is not +opposed," she repeated with the air of a physician confronted by a +hypochondriacal patient. + +"The children are mine," I rather foolishly proclaimed, with my first +touch of passion. + +"The children are yours," she admitted. And about her hung an air of +authority, of cool reserve, which I couldn't help resenting. + +"That is very generous of you," I admitted, not without ironic +intent. + +She smiled rather sadly as she sat looking at me. + +"It's something that doesn't rest with either of us," she said with +the suspicion of a quaver in her voice. And _she_, I suddenly +remembered, might some day sit eating her pot of honey on a grave. I +realized, too, that very little was to be gained by prolonging that +strangest of interviews. I wanted quietude in which to think things +over. I wanted to go back to my cell like a prisoner and brood over my +sentence.... + +And I have thought things over. I at last see the light. From this day +forward there shall be no vacillating. I am going back to Casa +Grande. + +I have always hated this house; I have always hated everything about +the place, without having the courage to admit it. I have done my +part, I have made my effort, and it was a wasted effort. I wasn't even +given a chance. And now I shall gather my things together and go back +to my home, to the only home that remains to me. I shall still have my +kiddies. I shall have my Poppsy and--But sharp as an arrow-head the +memory of my lost boy strikes into my heart. My Dinkie is gone. I no +longer have him to make what is left of my life endurable.... + +It is raining to-night, I notice, steadily and dismally. It is a dark +night, outside, for lost children.... + +Duncan has just come home, wet and muddy, and gone up to his room. The +gray-faced solemnity with which he strode past me makes me feel sure +that he has been conversing with his lady-love. But what difference +does it make? What difference does _anything_ make? In the matter of +women, I have just remembered, what may be one man's meat is another +man's poison. But I can't understand these reversible people, like +house-rugs, who can pretend to love two ways at once.... I only know +one man, in all the wide world, who has not shattered my faith in his +kind. He is one of those neck-or-nothing men who never change. + +There are many ranchers, out in this country, who keep what they call +a blizzard-line. It's a rope that stretches in winter from their +house-door to their shed or their stable, a rope that keeps them from +getting lost when a blizzard is raging. Peter, I know, has been my +blizzard-line. And in some way, please God, he will yet lead me back +to warmth. He is himself out there in the cold, accepting it, all the +time, with the same quiet fortitude that a Polar bear might. But he +will thole through, in the end. For with all his roughness he can be +unexpectedly adroit. Whinstane Sandy once told me something he had +learned about Polar bears in his old Yukon days: with all their +heaviness, they can go where a dog daren't venture. If need be, they +can flatten out and slide over a sheet of ice too thin to support a +running dog. And the drift-ice may be widening, but I refuse to give +up my hope of hope. "Let the mother go," as the Good Book says, "that +it may be well with thee!" ... + +I have just remembered that I tried to shoot my husband once. He may +make use of _that_, when he gets down to Virginia City. It might, in +fact, help things along very materially. And Susie's eyes will +probably pop out, when she reads it in a San Francisco paper.... + +I've thought of so many clever things I should have said to Alsina +Teeswater. As I look back, I find it was the other lady who did about +all the talking. There were old ulcerations to be cleared away, of +course, and I let her talk about the same as you let a dentist work +with his fingers in your mouth.... But now I must go up and make sure +my Poppsy is safely tucked in. I have just opened the door and looked +out. It is storming wretchedly. God pity any little boys who are +abroad on such a night! + + + + +_Two Hours Later_ + + +It is well past midnight. But there is no sleep this night for Chaddie +McKail. I am too happy to sleep. I am too happy to act sane. For my +boy is safe. _Peter has found my Dinkie!_ + +I was called to the telephone, a little after eleven, but couldn't +hear well on the up-stairs extension, so I went to the instrument +down-stairs, where the operator told me it was long-distance, from +Buckhorn. So I listened, with my heart in my mouth. But all I could +get was a buzz and crackle and an occasional ghostly word. It was the +storm, I suppose. Then I heard Peter's voice, thin and faint and far +away, but most unmistakably Peter's voice. + +"Can you hear me now?" he said, like a man speaking from the bottom of +the sea. + +"Yes," I called back. "What is it?" + +"Get ready for good news," said that thin but valorous voice that +seemed to be speaking from the tip-top mountains of Mars. But the +crackling and burring cut us off again. Then something must have +happened to the line, or we must have been switched to a better +circuit. For, the next moment, Peter's voice seemed almost in the next +room. It seemed to come closer at a bound, like a shore-line when you +look at it through a telescope. + +"Is that any better?" he asked through his miles and miles of +rain-swept blackness. + +"Yes, I can hear you plainly now," I told him. + +"Ah, yes, that _is_ better," he acknowledged. "And everything else is, +too, my dear. For I've found your Dinkie and----" + +"You've found Dinkie?" I gasped. + +"I have, thank God. And he's safe and sound!" + +"Where?" I demanded. + +"Fast asleep at Alabama Ranch." + +"Is he all right?" + +"As fit as a fiddle--all he wants is sleep." + +"_Oh, Peter!_" It was foolish. But it was all I could say for a full +minute. For my boy was alive, and safe. My laddie had been found by +Peter--by good old Peter, who never, in the time of need, was known to +fail me. + +"Where are you now?" I asked, when reason was once more on her +throne. + +"At Buckhorn," answered Peter. + +"And you went all that way through the mud and rain, just to tell me?" +I said. + +"I had to, or I'd blow up!" acknowledged Peter. "And now I'd like to +know what you want me to do." + +"I want you to come and get me, Peter," I said slowly and distinctly +over the wire. + +There was a silence of several seconds. + +"Do you understand what that means?" he finally demanded. His voice, I +noticed, had become suddenly solemn. + +"Yes, Peter, I understand," I told him. "Please come and get me!" And +again the silence was so prolonged that I had to cut in and ask: "Are +you there?" + +And Peter's voice answered "Yes." + +"Then you'll come?" I exacted, determined to burn all my bridges +behind me. + +"I'll be there on Monday," said Peter, with quiet decision. "I'll be +there with Tithonus and Tumble-Weed and the old prairie-schooner. And +we'll all trek home together!" + +"_Skookum!_" I said with altogether unbecoming levity. + +I patted the telephone instrument as I hung up the receiver. Then I +sat staring at it in a brown study. + +Then I went careening up-stairs and woke Poppsy out of a sound sleep +and hugged her until her bones were ready to crack and told her that +our Dinkie had been found again. And Poppsy, not being quite able to +get it through her sleepy little head, promptly began to bawl. But +there was little to bawl over, once she was thoroughly awake. And then +I went careening down to the telephone again, and called up Lossie's +boarding-house, and had her landlady root the poor girl out of bed, +and heard _her_ break down and have a little cry when I told her our +Dinkie had been found. And the first thing she asked me, when she was +able to talk again, was if Gershom Binks had been told of the good +news. And I had to acknowledge that I hadn't even _thought_ of poor +old Gershom, but that Peter Ketley would surely have passed the good +word on to Casa Grande, for Peter always seemed to think of the right +thing. + +And then I remembered about Duncan. For Duncan, whatever he may have +been, was still the boy's father. And he must be told. It was my duty +to tell him. So once more I climbed the stairs, but this time more +slowly. I had to wait a full minute before I found the courage, I +don't know why, to knock on Duncan's bedroom door. + +I knocked twice before any answer came. + +"What is it?" asked the familiar sleepy _bass_--and I realized what +gulfs yawned between us when my husband on one side of that closed +door could be lying lost in slumber and I on the other side of it +could find life doing such unparalleled things to me. I felt for him +as a girl home, tired from her first dance, feels for a young brother +asleep beside a Noah's Ark. + +"What is it?" I heard Duncan's voice repeating from the bed. + +"It's me," I rather weakly proclaimed. + +"What has happened?" was the question that came after a moment's +silence. + +I leaned with my face against the painted door-panel. It was smooth +and cool and pleasant to press one's skin against. + +"They've found Dinkie," I said. I could hear the squeak of springs as +my husband sat up in bed. + +"Is he all right?" + +"Yes, he's all right," I said with a great sigh. And I listened for an +answering sigh from the other side of the door. + +But instead of that Duncan's voice asked: "Where is he?" + +"At Alabama Ranch," I said, without realizing what that acknowledgment +meant. And again a brief period of silence intervened. + +"Who found him?" asked my husband, in a hardened voice. + +"Peter Ketley," I said, in as collected a voice as I could manage. And +this time the significance of the silence did not escape me. + +"Then your cup of happiness ought to be full," I heard the voice on +the other side of the door remark with heavy deliberateness. I stood +there with my face leaning against the cool panel. + +"It is," I said with a quiet audacity which surprised me almost as +much as it must have surprised the man on the bed a million miles away +from me. + + + + +_Sunday the Eighth_ + + +How different is life from what the fictioneers would paint it! How +hopelessly mixed-up and macaronic, how undignified in what ought to be +its big moments and how pompous in so many of its pettinesses! + +I told my husband to-day that Poppsy and I were going back to Casa +Grande. And that, surely, ought to have been the Big Moment in the +career of an unloved invertebrate. But the situation declined to take +off, as the airmen say. + +"I guess that means it's about time we got unscrambled," the man I had +once married and lived with quietly remarked. + +"Wasn't that your intention?" I just as quietly inquired. + +"It's what I've had forced on me," he retorted, with a protective +hardening of the Holbein-Astronomer jaw-line. + +"I'm sorry," was all I could find to say. + +He turned to the window and stared out at his big white iron fountain +set in his terraced lawn behind his endless cobble-stone walls. I +couldn't tell, of course, what he was thinking about. But I myself was +thinking of the past, the irrecoverable past, the irredeemable past, +the singing years of my womanly youth that seemed to be sealed in a +lowered coffin on which the sheltering earth would soon be heaped, on +which the first clods were already dropping with hollow sounds. We +each seemed afraid to look the other full in the eyes. So we armored +ourselves, as poor mortals must do, in the helmets of pretended +diffidence and the breast-plates of impersonality. + +"How are you going back?" my husband finally inquired. Whatever ghosts +it had been necessary to lay, I could see, he had by this time laid. +He no longer needed to stare out at the white iron fountain of which +he was so proud. + +"I've sent for the prairie-schooner," I told him. + +His flush of anger rather startled me. + +"Doesn't that impress you as rather cheaply theatrical?" he demanded. + +"I fancy it will be very comfortable," I told him, without looking up. +I'd apparently been attributing to him feelings which, after all, were +not so desolating as I might have wished. + +"Every one to his own taste," he observed as he called rather sharply +to Tokudo to bring him his humidor. Then he took out a cigar and +lighted it and ordered the car. And that was the lee and the long of +it. That was the way we faced our Great Divide, our forked trail that +veered off East and West into infinity! + + + + +_Thursday the Eleventh_ + + +The trek is over. And it was not one of triumph. For we find +ourselves, sometimes, in deeper water than we imagine. Then we have to +choke and gasp for a while before we can get our breath back. + +Peter, in the first place, didn't appear with the prairie-schooner. He +left that to come later in the day, with Whinnie and Struthers. He +appeared quite early Monday morning, with fire in his eye, and with a +demand to see the master of the house. Heaven knows what he had heard, +or how he had heard it. But the two men were having it hot and heavy +when I felt it was about time for me to step into the room. To be +quite frank, I had not expected any such outburst from Duncan. I knew +his feelings were not involved, and where you have a vacuum it is +impossible, of course, to have an explosion. I interpreted his +resentment as a show of opposition to save his face. But I was wrong. +And I was wrong about Peter. That mild-eyed man is no plaster saint. +He can fight, if he's goaded into it, and fight like a bulldog. He +was saying a few plain truths to Duncan, when I stepped into the room, +a few plain truths which took the color out of the Dour Man's face and +made him shake with anger. + +"For two cents," Duncan was rather childishly shouting at him, "I'd +fill you full of lead!" + +"Try it!" said Peter, who wasn't any too steady himself. "Try it, and +you'd at least end up with doing something in the open!" + +Duncan studied him, like a prize-fighter studying his waiting +opponent. + +"You're a cheap actor," he finally announced. "This sort of thing +isn't settled that way, and you know it." + +"And it's not going to be settled the way you intended," announced +Peter Ketley. + +"What do you know about my intentions?" demanded Duncan. + +"Much more than you imagine," retorted Peter. "I've got your record, +McKail, and I've had it for three years. I've stood by, until now; but +the time has come when I'm going to have a hand in this thing. And +you're not going to get your freedom by dragging this woman's name +through a divorce-court. If there's any dragging to be done, it's +your carcass that's going to be tied to the tail-board!" + +Duncan stood studying him with a face cheese-colored with hate. + +"Aren't you rather double-crossing yourself?" he mocked. + +"I'm not thinking about myself," said Peter. + +"Then what's prompting all the heroics?" demanded Duncan. + +"For two years and more, McKail," Peter cried out as he stepped closer +to the other man, "you've given this woman a pretty good working idea +of hell. And I've seen enough of it. It's going to end. It's got to +end. But it's not going to end the way you've so neatly figured out!" + +"Then how do you propose to end it?" Duncan demanded, with a sort of +second-wind of composure. But his face was still colorless. + +"You'll see when the time comes," retorted Peter. + +"You may have rather a long wait," taunted Duncan. + +"I have waited a number of years," answered the other man, with a +dignity which sent a small thrill up and down my spine. "And I can +wait a number of years more if I have to." + +"We all knew, of course, that you were waiting," sneered my husband. + +Peter turned to fling back an answer to that, but I stepped between +them. I was tired of being haggled over, like marked-down goods on a +bargain-counter. I was tired of being a passive agent before forces +that seemed stripping me of my last shred of dignity. I was tired of +the shoddiness of the entire shoddy situation. + +And I told them so. I told them I'd no intention of being bargained +over, and that I'd had rather enough of men for the rest of my natural +life, and if Duncan wanted his freedom he was at liberty to take it +without the slightest opposition from me. And I said a number of other +things, which I have no wish either to remember or record. But it +resulted in Duncan staring at me in a resurrection-plant sort of way, +and in Peter rather dolorously taking his departure. I wanted to call +him back, but I couldn't carpenter together any satisfactory excuse +for his coming back, and I couldn't see any use in it. + +So instead of journeying happily homeward in the cavernous old +prairie-schooner, I felt a bit ridiculous as Tokudo impassively +carried our belongings out to the canvas-covered wagon and Poppsy and +I climbed aboard. The good citizens of American Hill stared after us +as we rumbled down through the neatly boulevarded streets, and I felt +suspiciously like a gypsy-queen who'd been politely requested by the +local constabulary to move on. + +It wasn't until we reached the open country that my spirits revived. +Then the prairie seemed to reach out its hand to me and give me peace. +We camped, that first night, in the sheltering arm of a little coulée +threaded by a tiny stream. We cooked bacon and eggs and coffee while +Whinnie out-spanned his team and put up his tent. + +I sat on an oat-sack, after supper, with Poppsy between my knees, +watching the evening stars come out. They were worlds, I remembered, +some of them worlds perhaps with sorrowing men and women on them. And +they seemed very lonely and far-away worlds, until I heard the drowsy +voice of my Poppsy say up through the dusk: "In two days more, Mummy, +we'll be back to Dinkie, won't we?" + +And there was much, I remembered, for which a mother should be +thankful. + + + + +_Sunday the Fourteenth_ + + +_Dark, and true, and tender is the North._ Heaven bless the rhymster +who first penned those words. Spring is stealing hack to the prairie, +and our world is a world of beauty. The sky to-day is windrowed with +flat-bottomed cumulus-clouds, tier beyond tier above a level plane of +light, marking off the infinite distance like receding mile-stones on +a world turned over on its back. Occasionally the outstretched head of +a wild duck, pumping north with a black throb of wings, melts away to +a speck in the opaline air. Back among the muskeg reeds the waders are +courting and chattering, and early this morning I heard the plaintive +winnowing call-note of the Wilson snipe, and later the _punk-e-lunk_ +love-cry of a bittern to his mate. There's an eagle planing in lazy +circles high in the air, even now, putting a soft-pedal on the noise +of the coots and grebes as he circles over their rush-lined cabarets. +And somewhere out on the range a bull is lowing. It is the season of +love and the season of happiness. Dinkie and Poppsy and I are going +out to gather prairie-crocuses. They are thick now in the prairie-sod, +soft blue and lavender and sometimes mauve. We must dance to the +vernal saraband while we can: Spring is so short in this norland +country of ours. It comes late. But as Peter says, A late spring never +deceives.... + +I thought I had offended Peter for life. But when he appeared late +this afternoon and I asked him why he had kept away from me, he said +these first few days naturally belonged to Dinkie and he'd been busy +studying marsh-birds. He looked rather rumpled and muddy, and +impressed me as a man sadly in need of a woman to look after his +things. + +"Let's ride," said Peter. "I want to talk to you." + +I was afraid of that talk, but I was more afraid something might +happen to interfere with it. So I changed into my old riding-duds and +put on my weather-stained old sombrero and we saddled Buntie and +Laughing-Gas and went loping off over the sun-washed prairie with our +shadows behind us. + +We rode a long way before Peter said anything. I wanted to be happy, +but I wasn't quite able to be. I tried to think of neither the past +nor the future, but there were too many ghosts of other days loping +along the trail beside us. + +"What are you going to do?" Peter finally inquired. + +"About what?" I temporized as he pulled up beside me. + +"About everything," he ungenerously responded. + +"I don't know what to do, Peter," I had to acknowledge. "I'm like a +barrel without hoops. I want to stick together, but one more thump +will surely send me to pieces!" + +"Then why not get the hoops around?" suggested Peter. + +"But where will I get the hoops?" I asked. + +"Here," he said. He was, I noticed, holding out his arms. And I +laughed, even though my heart was heavy. + +"Men have been a great disappointment to me, Peter," I said with a +shake of my sombrero. + +"Try me," suggested Peter. + +But still again I had to shake my head. + +"That wouldn't be fair, Peter," I told him. "I can't spoil your life +to see what's left of my own patched up." + +"Then you're going to spoil two of 'em!" he promptly asserted. + +"But I don't believe in that sort of thing," I did my best to explain +to him. "I've had my innings, and _I'm out_. I've a one-way heart, the +same as a one-way street. I don't think there's anything in the world +more odious than promiscuity. That's a big word, but it stands for an +even bigger offense against God. I've always said I intended to be a +single-track woman." + +"But your track's blown up," contended Peter. + +"Then I'll have to lay me a new one," I said with a fine show of +assurance. + +"And do you know where it will lead?" he demanded, + +"Where?" I asked. + +"Straight to me," he said as he studied me with eyes that were so +quiet and kind I could feel a flutter of my heart-wings. + +But still again I shook my head. + +"That would be bringing you nothing but a withered up old has-been," I +said with a mock-wail of misery. + +And Peter actually laughed at that. + +"It'll be a good ten years before you've even grown up," he retorted. +"And another twenty years before you've really settled down!" + +"You're saying I'll never have sense," I objected. "And I know you're +right." + +"That's what I love about you," averred Peter. + +"What you love about me?" I demanded. + +"Yes," he said with his patient old smile, "your imperishable +youthfulness, your eternal never-ending eternity-defying golden-tinted +girlishness!" + +A flute began to play in my heart. And I knew that like Ulysses's men +I would have to close my ears to it. But it's easier to row past an +island than to run away from your own heart. + +"I know it's a lie, Peter, but I love you for saying it. It makes me +want to hug you, and it makes me want to pirouette, if I wasn't on +horseback. It makes my heart sing. But it's only the singing of one +lonely little chickadee in the middle of a terribly big pile of ruins. +For that's all my life can be now, just a hopeless smash-up. And +you're cut out for something better than a wrecking-car for the rest +of your days." + +"No, no," protested Peter. "It's _you_ who've got to save _me_." + +"Save you?" I echoed. + +"You've got to give me something to live for, or I'll just rust away +in the ditch and never get back to the rails again." + +"Peter!" I cried. + +"What?" he asked. + +"You're not playing fair. You're trying to make me pity you." + +"Well, don't you?" demanded Peter. + +"I would if I saw you sacrificing your life for a woman with a +crazy-quilt past." + +"I'm not thinking of the past," asserted Peter, "I'm thinking of the +future." + +"That's just it," I tried to explain. "I'll have to face that future +with a clouded name. I'll be a divorced woman. Ugh! I always thought +of divorced women as something you wouldn't quite care to sit next to +at table. I hate divorce." + +"I'm a Quaker myself," acknowledged Peter. "But I occasionally think +of what Cobbett once said: 'I don't much like weasels. Yet I hate +rats. Therefore I say success to the weasels!'" + +"I don't see what weasels have to do with it," I complained. + +"Putting one's house in order again may sometimes be as beneficent as +surgery," contended Peter. + +"And sometimes as painful," I added. + +"Yet there's no mistake like not cleaning up old mistakes." + +"But I hate it," I told him. "It all seems so--so cheap." + +"On the contrary," corrected Peter, "it's rather costly." He pulled up +across my path and made me come to a stop. "My dear," he said, very +solemn again, "I know the stuff you're made of. I know you've got to +climb to the light by a path of your own choosing. And you have to see +the light with your own eyes. But I'm willing to wait. I _have_ +waited, a very long time. But there's one fact you've got to face: I +love you too much ever to dream of giving you up." + +I don't think either of us moved for a full moment. The flute was +singing so loud in my heart that I was afraid of myself. And, +woman-like, I backed away from the thing I wanted. + +"It's not _me_, Peter, I must remember now. It's my bairns. I've two +bairns to bring up." + +"I've got the three of you to bring up," maintained Peter. And that +made us both sit silent for another moment or two. + +"It's not that simple," I finally said, though Peter smiled guardedly +at my ghost of a smile. + +"It would be if you cared for me as much as Dinkie does," he said with +quite unnecessary solemnity. + +"Oh, Peter, I do, I do," I cried out as the memory of all I owed him +surged mistily through my mind. "But a gray hair is something you +can't joke away. And I've got five of them, right here over my left +ear. I found them, months ago. And they're there to stay!" + +"How about my bald spot?" demanded my oppressor and my deliverer +rolled into one. + +"What's a bald spot compared to a bob-cat of a temper like mine?" I +challenged, remembering how I'd once heard a revolver-hammer snap in +my husband's face. + +"But it's your spirit I like," maintained the unruffled Peter. + +"You wouldn't always," I reminded him. + +Yet he merely looked at me with his trust-me-and-test-me expression. + +"I'll chance it!" he said, after a quite contented moment or two of +meditative silence. + +"But don't you see," I went forlornly arguing on, "it mustn't be a +chance. That's something people of our age can never afford to take." + +And Peter, at that, for some reason I couldn't fathom, began to wag +his head. He did it slowly and lugubriously, like a man who inspects a +road he has no liking for. But at the same time, apparently, he was +finding it hard to tuck away a small smile of triumph. + +"Then we must never see each other again," he solemnly asserted. + +"Peter!" I cried. + +"I must go away, at once," he meditatively observed. + +"_Peter!_" I said again, with the flute turning into a pair of +ice-tongs that clamped into the corners of my heart. + +"Far, far away," he continued as he studiously avoided my eye. "For +there will be safety now only in flight." + +"Safety from what?" I demanded. + +"From you," retorted Peter. + +"But what will happen to _me_, if you do that?" I heard my own voice +asking as Buntie started to paw the prairie-floor and I did my level +best to fight down the black waves of desolation that were +half-drowning me. "What'll there be to hold me up, when you're the +only man in all this world who can keep my barrel of happiness from +going slap-bang to pieces? What----?" + +"_Verboten!_" interrupted Peter. But that solemn-soft smile of his +gathered me in and covered me, very much as the rumpled feathers of a +mother-bird cover her young, her crazily twittering and crazily +wandering young who never know their own mind. + +"What'll happen to me," I went desperately on, "when you're the only +man alive who understands this crazy old heart of mine, when you've +taught me to hitch the last of my hope on the one unselfish man I've +ever known?" + +This seemed to trouble Peter. But only remotely, as the lack of +grammar in the Lord's Prayer might affect a Holy Roller. He insisted, +above all things, on being judicial. + +"Then I'll have to come back, I suppose," he finally admitted, "for +Dinkie's sake." + +"Why for Dinkie's sake?" I asked. + +"Because some day, my dear, our Dinkie is going to be a great man. And +I want to have a hand in fashioning that greatness." + +I sat looking at the red ball of the sun slipping down behind the +shoulder of the world. A wind came out of the North, cool and sweet +and balsamic with hope. I heard a loon cry. And then the earth was +still again. + +"_We'll be waiting_," I said, with a tear of happiness tickling the +bridge of my nose. And then, so that Peter might not see still another +loon crying, I swung Buntie sharply about on the trail. And we rode +home, side by side, through the twilight. + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prairie Child, by Arthur Stringer + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRAIRIE CHILD *** + +***** This file should be named 28514-8.txt or 28514-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/8/5/1/28514/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Prairie Child + +Author: Arthur Stringer + +Illustrator: E. F. Ward + +Release Date: April 6, 2009 [EBook #28514] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRAIRIE CHILD *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<hr class='pb' /> +<div class='figcenter'> +<a name='linki_1' id='linki_1'></a> +<img src='images/illus-fpc.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 404px; height: 505px;' /><br /> +<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 404px;'> +We gathered wood and made a fire<br /> +</p> +</div> +<hr class='pb' /> +<table style='margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; border-collapse:collapse; border: black 2px solid;' summary=""> + <tr><td> + <table style='width:24em; margin: 1px 1px; border-collapse:collapse; border: black 1px solid;' summary=""> + +<tr><td colspan='2'> +<p class='tp' style='font-size:2.2em;margin-top:10px;'>THE</p> +<p class='tp' style='font-size:2.4em;'>PRAIRIE CHILD</p> +<hr style='border:none; border-top:2px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; height:3px; margin:20px auto;' /> +<p class='tp' style='font-size:1.3em;font-variant:small-caps;'>By ARTHUR STRINGER</p> +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; margin:20px auto;' /> +<p class='tp' style='font-variant:small-caps;'>Author of</p> +<p class='tp' style='font-style:italic;font-size:0.8em;'>“Are All Men Alike and the Lost Titian,” “The Prairie<br /> +Mother,” “The Prairie Wife,” “The Wine of Life,”<br /> +“The Door of Dread,” “The Man Who Couldn’t<br /> +Sleep,” etc.</p> +</td></tr> + +<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'> +<img alt='' style='margin:20px auto;' src='images/illus-emb.png' /> +</td></tr> + +<tr><td colspan='2'> +<p class='tp' style='font-variant:small-caps;'>With Frontispiece by</p> +<p class='tp' style='font-variant:small-caps;font-size:1.2em; margin-bottom:30px;'>E. F. WARD</p> +<hr style='border:none; border-top:2px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; height:3px; margin:20px auto;' /> +<p class='tp' style='font-size:1.3em;'>A. L. BURT COMPANY</p> +</td></tr> +<tr> +<td align='left' style='padding-left:1em;'><span style='font-size:1.2em;'>Publishers</span></td> +<td align='right' style='padding-right:1em;'><span style='font-size:1.2em;'>New York</span></td> +</tr> +<tr><td colspan='2'> +<p class='tp' style='font-size:0.8em;margin-top:15px;'>Published by arrangement with The Bobbs-Merrill Company</p> +<p class='tp' style='margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:10px;font-size:0.8em;'>Printed in U. S. A.</p> +</td></tr> + + </table> + </td></tr> +</table> +<hr class='pb' /> +<p class='tp' style='font-variant:small-caps;font-size:0.8em;'>Copyright 1922<br />The Pictorial Review Company</p> +<hr style='border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; margin:10px auto; width:7.071%' /> +<p class='tp' style='font-variant:small-caps;font-size:0.8em;margin-bottom:30px;'>Copyright 1922<br />The Bobbs-Merrill Company</p> +<p class='tp' style='font-size:0.8em;font-style:italic;'>Printed in the United States of America</p> +<hr class='pb' /> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_1' name='page_1'></a>1</span></div> +<h1>THE PRAIRIE CHILD</h1> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<a name='FRIDAY_THE_EIGHTH_OF_MARCH' id='FRIDAY_THE_EIGHTH_OF_MARCH'></a> +<h2><i>Friday the Eighth of March</i></h2> +</div> +<p>“But the thing I can’t understand, Dinky-Dunk, +is how you ever <i>could</i>.”</p> +<p>“Could what?” my husband asked in an aerated +tone of voice.</p> +<p>I had to gulp before I got it out.</p> +<p>“Could kiss a woman like that,” I managed to explain.</p> +<p>Duncan Argyll McKail looked at me with a much +cooler eye than I had expected. If he saw my shudder, +he paid no attention to it.</p> +<p>“On much the same principle,” he quietly announced, +“that the Chinese eat birds’ nests.”</p> +<p>“Just what do you mean by that?” I demanded, +resenting the fact that he could stand as silent as a +December beehive before my morosely questioning +eyes.</p> +<p>“I mean that, being married, you’ve run away +with the idea that all birds’ nests are made out of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_2' name='page_2'></a>2</span> +mud and straw, with possibly a garnish of horse +hairs. But if you’d really examine these edible nests +you’d find they were made of surprisingly appealing +and succulent tendrils. They’re quite appetizing, +you may be sure, or they’d never be eaten!”</p> +<p>I stood turning this over, exactly as I’ve seen +my Dinkie turn over an unexpectedly rancid nut.</p> +<p>“Aren’t you, under the circumstances, being rather +stupidly clever?” I finally asked.</p> +<p>“When I suppose you’d rather see me cleverly +stupid?” he found the heart to suggest.</p> +<p>“But that woman, to me, always looked like a +frog,” I protested, doing my best to duplicate his +pose of impersonality.</p> +<p>“Well, she doesn’t make love like a frog,” he retorted +with his first betraying touch of anger. I +turned to the window, to the end that my Eliza-Crossing-the-Ice +look wouldn’t be entirely at his +mercy. A belated March blizzard was slapping at +the panes and cuffing the house-corners. At the end +of a long winter, I knew, tempers were apt to be +short. But this was much more than a matter of +barometers. The man I’d wanted to live with like +a second “Suzanne de Sirmont” in Daudet’s <i>Happiness</i> +had not only cut me to the quick but was +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3' name='page_3'></a>3</span> +rubbing salt in the wound. He had said what he +did with deliberate intent to hurt me, for it was only +too obvious that he was tired of being on the defensive. +And it did hurt. It couldn’t help hurting. +For the man, after all, was my husband. He was +the husband to whom I’d given up the best part of my +life, the two-legged basket into which I’d packed all +my eggs of allegiance. And now he was scrambling +that precious collection for a cheap omelette of amorous +adventure. He was my husband, I kept reminding +myself. But that didn’t cover the entire case. +No husband whose heart is right stands holding another +woman’s shoulder and tries to read her shoe-numbers +through her ardently upturned eyes. It +shows the wind is not blowing right in the home +circle. It shows a rent in the dyke, a flaw in the +blade, a breach in the fortress-wall of faith. For +marriage, to the wife who is a mother as well, impresses +me as rather like the spliced arrow of the +Esquimos: it is cemented together with blood. It +is a solemn matter. And for the sake of <i>mutter-schutz</i>, +if for nothing else, it must be kept that way.</p> +<p>There was a time, I suppose, when the thought of +such a thing would have taken my breath away, +would have chilled me to the bone. But I’d been +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4' name='page_4'></a>4</span> +through my refining fires, in that respect, and you +can’t burn the prairie over twice in the same season. +I tried to tell myself it was the setting, and not the +essential fact, that seemed so odious. I did my best +to believe it wasn’t so much that Duncan Argyll +McKail had stooped to make advances to this bandy-legged +she-teacher whom I’d so charitably housed at +Casa Grande since the beginning of the year—for +I’d long since learned not to swallow the antique +claim that of all terrestrial <i>carnivora</i> only man and +the lion are truly monogamous—but more the fact +it had been made such a back-stairs affair with no +solitary redeeming touch of dignity.</p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk, I suppose, would have laughed it +away, if I hadn’t walked in on them with their arms +about each other, and the bandy-legged one breathing +her capitulating sighs into his ear. But there +was desperation in the eyes of Miss Alsina Teeswater, +and it was plain to see that if my husband +had been merely playing with fire it had become +a much more serious matter with the lady in the +case. There was, in fact, something almost dignifying +in that strickenly defiant face of hers. I was +almost sorry for her when she turned and walked +white-lipped out of the room. What I resented most, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5' name='page_5'></a>5</span> +as I stood facing my husband, was his paraded casualness, +his refusal to take a tragic situation tragically. +His attitude seemed to imply that we were +about to have a difference over a small thing—over +a small thing with brown eyes. He could even stand +inspecting me with a mildly amused glance, and I +might have forgiven his mildness, I suppose, if it had +been without amusement, and that amusement in +some way at my expense. He even managed to laugh +as I stood there staring at him. It was neither an +honest nor a natural laugh. It merely gave me the +feeling that he was trying to entrench himself behind +a raw mound of mirth, that any shelter was welcome +until the barrage was lifted.</p> +<p>“And what do you intend doing about it?” I asked, +more quietly than I had imagined possible.</p> +<p>“What would you suggest?” he parried, as he began +to feel in his pockets for his pipe.</p> +<p>And I still had a sense, as I saw the barricaded +look come into his face, of entrenchments being frantically +thrown up. I continued to stare at him as he +found his pipe and proceeded to fill it. I even wrung +a ghostly satisfaction out of the discovery that his +fingers weren’t so steady as he might have wished +them to be. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6' name='page_6'></a>6</span></p> +<p>“I suppose you’re trying to make me feel like the +Wicked Uncle edging away from the abandoned +Babes in the Woods?” he finally demanded, as +though exasperated by my silence. He was delving +for matches by this time, and seemed disappointed +that none was to be found in his pockets. I don’t +know why he should seem to recede from me, for he +didn’t move an inch from where he stood with that +defensively mocking smile on his face. But abysmal +gulfs of space seemed to blow in like sea-mists between +him and me, desolating and lonely stretches +of emptiness which could never again be spanned by +the tiny bridges of hope. I felt alone, terribly alone, +in a world over which the last fire had swept and the +last rains had fallen. My throat tightened and my +eyes smarted from the wave of self-pity which washed +through my body. It angered me, ridiculously, to +think that I was going to break down at such a +time.</p> +<p>But the more I thought over it the more +muddled I grew. There was something maddening +in the memory that I was unable to act as my instincts +prompted me to act, that I couldn’t, like +the outraged wife of screen and story, walk promptly +out of the door and slam it epochally shut after me. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7' name='page_7'></a>7</span> +But modern life never quite lives up to its fiction. +And we are never quite free, we women who have +given our hostages to fortune, to do as we wish. We +have lives other than our own to think about.</p> +<p>“But it’s all been so—so <i>dishonest</i>!” I cried out, +stopping myself in the middle of a gesture which +might have seemed like wringing my hands.</p> +<p>That, apparently, gave Dinky-Dunk something to +get his teeth into. The neutral look went out of his +eye, to be replaced by a fortifying stare of enmity.</p> +<p>“I don’t know as it’s any more dishonest than the +long-distance brand of the same thing!”</p> +<p>I knew, at once, what he meant. He meant Peter. +He meant poor old Peter Ketley, whose weekly letter, +year in and year out, came as regular as clockwork +to Casa Grande. Those letters came to my +son Dinkie, though it couldn’t be denied they carried +many a cheering word and many a companionable +message to Dinkie’s mother. But it brought me up +short, to think that my own husband would try to +play cuttle-fish with a clean-hearted and a clean-handed +man like Peter. The wave that went through +my body, on this occasion, was one of rage. I tried +to say something, but I couldn’t. The lion of my +anger had me down, by this time, with his paw on my +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8' name='page_8'></a>8</span> +breast. The power of speech was squeezed out of +my carcass. I could only stare at my husband with +a denuding and devastating stare of incredulity +touched with disgust, of abhorrence skirting dangerously +close along the margins of hate. And he +stared back, with morose and watchful defiance on +his face.</p> +<p>Heaven only knows how it would have ended, if +that tableau hadn’t gone smash, with a sudden offstage +clatter and thump and cry which reminded me +there were more people in the world than Chaddie +McKail and her philandering old husband. For +during that interregnum of parental preoccupation +Dinkie and Poppsy had essayed to toboggan down +the lower half of the front-stairs in an empty drawer +commandeered from my bedroom dresser. Their +descent, apparently, had been about as precipitate +as that of their equally adventurous sire down the +treads of my respect, for they had landed in a heap +on the hardwood floor of the hall and I found Dinkie +with an abraded shin-bone and Poppsy with a cut +lip. My Poppsy was more frightened at the sight +of blood than actually hurt by her fall, and Dinkie +betrayed a not unnatural tendency to enlarge on +his injuries in extenuation of his offense. But that +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9' name='page_9'></a>9</span> +suddenly imposed demand for first-aid took my mind +out of the darker waters in which it had been wallowing, +and by the time I had comforted my kiddies +and completed my ministrations Dinky-Dunk had +quietly escaped from the house and my accusatory +stares by clapping on his hat and going out to the +stables....</p> +<p>And that’s the scene which keeps pacing back and +forth between the bars of my brain like a jaguar in +a circus-cage. That’s the scene I’ve been living over, +for the last few days, thinking of all the more brilliant +things I might have said and the more expedient +things I might have done. And that’s the scene +which has been working like yeast at the bottom of +my sodden batter of contentment, making me feel +that I’d swell up and burst, if all that crazy ferment +couldn’t find some relief in expression. So after +three long years and more of silence I’m turning +back to this, the journal of one irresponsible old +Chaddie McKail, who wanted so much to be happy +and who has in some way missed the pot of gold +that they told her was to be found at the rainbow’s +end.</p> +<p>It seems incredible, as I look back, that more than +three, long years should slip away without the penning +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10' name='page_10'></a>10</span> +of one line in this, the safety-valve of my soul. +But the impulse to write rather slipped away from +me. It wasn’t that there was so little to record, for +life is always life. But when it burns clearest it +seems to have the trick of consuming its own smoke +and leaving so very little ash. The crowded even +tenor of existence goes on, with its tidal ups and +downs, too listlessly busy to demand expression. +Then the shock of tempest comes, and it’s only after +we’re driven out of them that we realize we’ve been +drifting so long in the doldrums of life. Then it +comes home to us that there are the Dark Ages in +the history of a woman exactly as there were the +Dark Ages in the history of Europe. Life goes on +in those Dark Ages, but it doesn’t feel the call to +articulate itself, to leave a record of its experiences. +And that strikes me, as I sit here and think of it, +as about the deepest tragedy that can overtake anything +on this earth. Nothing, after all, is sadder +than silence, the silence of dead civilizations and dead +cities and dead souls. And nothing is more costly. +For beauty itself, in actual life, passes away, but +beauty lovingly recorded by mortal hands endures +and goes down to our children. And I stop writing, +at that word of “children,” for miraculously, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span> +as I repeat it, I see it cut a window in the unlighted +house of my heart. And that window is the bright +little Gothic oriel which will always be golden and +luminous with love and will always send the last +shadow scurrying away from the mustiest corner of +my tower of life. I have my Dinkie and my Poppsy, +and nothing can take them away from me. It’s on +them that I pin my hope.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_SEVENTEENTH' id='SUNDAY_THE_SEVENTEENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Seventeenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I’ve been thinking a great deal over what’s happened +this last week or so. And I’ve been trying +to reorganize my life, the same as you put a house +to rights after a funeral. But it wasn’t a well-ordered +funeral, in this case, and I was denied even +the tempered satisfaction of the bereaved after the +finality of a smoothly conducted burial. For nothing +has been settled. It’s merely that Time has been +trying to encyst what it can not absorb. I felt, for +a day or two, that I had nothing much to live for. +I felt like a feather-weight who’d faced a knock-out. +I saw Pride go to the mat, and take the count, and +if I was dazed, for a while, I suppose it was mostly +convalescence from shock. Then I tightened my belt, +and reminded myself that it wasn’t the first wallop +Fate had given me, and remembered that in this life +you have to adjust yourself to your environment +or be eliminated from the game. And life, I suppose, +has tamed me, as a man who once loved me said it +would do. The older I get the more tolerant I try +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span> +to be, and the more I know of this world the more +I realize that Right is seldom all on one side and +Wrong on the other. It’s a matter of give and take, +this problem of traveling in double-harness. I can +even smile a little, as I remember that college day in +my teens when Matilda-Anne and Katrina and +Fanny-Rain-in-the-Face and myself solemnly discussed +man and his make-up, over a three-pound box +of Maillard’s, and resolutely agreed that we would +surrender our hearts to no suitor over twenty-six and +marry no male who’d ever loved another woman—not, +at least, unless the situation had become compensatingly +romanticized by the death of any such +lady preceding us in our loved one’s favor. Little +we knew of men and ourselves and the humiliations +with which life breaks the spirit of arrogant youth! +For even now, knowing what I know, I’ve been +doing my best to cooper together a case for my unstable +old Dinky-Dunk. I’ve been trying to keep +the thought of poor dead Lady Alicia out of my +head. I’ve been wondering if there’s any truth in +what Dinky-Dunk said, a few weeks ago, about a +mere father being like the male of the warrior-spider +whom the female of the species stands ready to dine +upon, once she’s assured of her progeny. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span></p> +<p>I suppose I <i>have</i> given most of my time and attention +to my children. And it’s as perilous, I suppose, +to give your heart to a man and then take it even +partly away again as it is to give a trellis to a +rose-bush and then expect it to stand alone. My +husband, too, has been restless and dissatisfied with +prairie life during the last year or so, has been rocking +in his own doldrums of inertia where the sight +of even the humblest ship—and the Wandering Sail +in this case always seemed to me as soft and shapeless +as a boned squab-pigeon!—could promptly elicit +an answering signal.</p> +<p>But I strike a snag there, for Alsina has not been +so boneless as I anticipated. There was an unlooked-for +intensity in her eyes and a mild sort of tragedy +in her voice when she came and told me that she +was going to another school in the Knee-Hill country +and asked if I could have her taken in to Buckhorn +the next morning. Some one, of course, had +to go. There was one too many in this prairie home +that must always remain so like an island dotting +the lonely wastes of a lonely sea. And triangles, +oddly enough, seem to flourish best in city squares. +But much as I wanted to talk to Alsina, I was compelled +to respect her reserve. I even told her that +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span> +Dinkie would miss her a great deal. She replied, +with a choke in her voice, that he was a wonderful +child. That, of course, was music to the ears of his +mother, and my respect for the tremulous Miss +Teeswater went up at least ten degrees. But when +she added, without meeting my eye, that she was +really fond of the boy, I couldn’t escape the impression +that she was edging out on very thin ice. It +was, I think, only the silent misery in her half-averted +face which kept me from inquiring if she +hadn’t rather made it a family affair. But that, +second thought promptly told me, would seem too +much like striking the fallen. And we both seemed +to feel, thereafter, that silence was best.</p> +<p>Practically nothing passed between us, in fact, +until we reached the station. I could see that she +was dreading the ordeal of saying good-by. That +unnamed sixth sense peculiar to cab-drivers and +waiters and married women told me that every moment +on the bald little platform was being a torture +to her. As the big engine came lumbering up to a +standstill she gave me one quick and searching look. +It was a look I shall never forget. For, in it was +a question and something more than a question. An +unworded appeal was there, and also an unworded +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span> +protest. It got past my outposts of reason, in +some way. It came to me in my bitterness like the +smell of lilacs into a sick-room. I couldn’t be cruel +to that poor crushed outcast who had suffered quite +as much from the whole ignoble affair as I had suffered. +I suddenly held out my hand to her, and she +took it, with that hungry questioning look still on +her face.</p> +<p>“It’s all right,” I started to say. But her head +suddenly went down between her hunched-up shoulders. +Her body began to shake and tears gushed +from her eyes. I had to help her to the car steps.</p> +<p>“It was all my fault,” she said in a strangled voice, +between her helpless little sobs.</p> +<p>It was brave of her, of course, and she meant it +for the best. But I wish she hadn’t said it. Instead +of making everything easier for me, as she intended, +she only made it harder. She left me disturbingly +conscious of ghostly heroisms which transposed +what I had tried to regard as essentially ignoble +into some higher and purer key. And she made it +harder for me to look at my husband, when I got +home, with a calm and collected eye. I felt suspiciously +like Lady Macbeth after the second murder. +I felt that we were fellow-sharers of a guilty secret +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17' name='page_17'></a>17</span> +it would never do to drag too often into the light +of every-day life.</p> +<p>But it will no more stay under cover, I find, than +a dab-chick will stay under water. It bobs up in +the most unexpected places, as it did last night, +when Dinkie publicly proclaimed that he was going +to marry his Mummy when he got big.</p> +<p>“It would be well, my son, not to repeat the mistakes +of your father!” observed Dinky-Dunk. And +having said it, he relighted his quarantining pipe +and refused to meet my eye. But it didn’t take a +surgical operation to get what he meant into my +head. It hurt, in more ways than one, for it struck +me as suspiciously like a stone embodied in a snowball—and +even our offspring recognized this as no +fair manner of fighting.</p> +<p>“Then it impresses you as a mistake?” I demanded, +seeing red, for the coyote in me, I’m afraid, will +never entirely become house-dog.</p> +<p>“Isn’t that the way you regard it?” he asked, inspecting +me with a non-committal eye.</p> +<p>I had to bite my lip, to keep from flinging out at +him the things that were huddled back in my heart. +But it was no time for making big war medicine. So +I got the lid on, and held it there. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span></p> +<p>“My dear Dinky-Dunk,” I said with an effort at +a gesture of weariness, “I’ve long since learned that +life can’t be made clean, like a cat’s body, by the use +of the tongue alone!”</p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk did not look at me. Instead, he +turned to the boy who was watching that scene with +a small frown of perplexity on his none too approving +face.</p> +<p>“You go up to the nursery,” commanded my husband, +with more curtness than usual.</p> +<p>But before Dinkie went he slowly crossed the room +and kissed me. He did so with a quiet resoluteness +which was not without its tacit touch of challenge.</p> +<p>“You may feel that way about the use of the +tongue,” said my husband as soon as we were alone, +“but I’m going to unload a few things I’ve been keeping +under cover.”</p> +<p>He waited for me to say something. But I preferred +remaining silent.</p> +<p>“Of course,” he floundered on, “I don’t want to +stop you martyrizing yourself in making a mountain +out of a mole-hill. But I’m getting a trifle tired of +this holier-than-thou attitude. And––”</p> +<p>“And?” I prompted, when he came to a stop and +sat pushing up his brindled front-hair until it made +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span> +me think of the Corean lion on the library mantel, +the lion in pottery which we invariably spoke of as +the Dog of Fo. My wintry smile at that resemblance +seemed to exasperate him.</p> +<p>“What were you going to say?” I quietly inquired.</p> +<p>“Oh, hell!” he exclaimed, with quite unexpected +vigor.</p> +<p>“I hope the children are out of hearing,” I reminded +him, solemn-eyed.</p> +<p>“Yes, the children!” he cried, catching at the +word exactly as a drowning man catches at a lifebelt. +“The children! That’s just the root of the +whole intolerable situation. This hasn’t been a home +for the last three or four years; it’s been nothing but +a nursery. And about all I’ve been is a retriever for +a <i>crèche</i>, a clod-hopper to tiptoe about the sacred +circle and see to it there’s enough flannel to cover +their backs and enough food to put into their stomachs. +I’m an accident, of course, an intruder to be +faced with fortitude and borne with patience.”</p> +<p>“This sounds quite disturbing,” I interrupted. “It +almost leaves me suspicious that you are about to +emulate the rabbit and devour your young.”</p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk fixed me with an accusatory finger.</p> +<p>“And the fact that you can get humor out of it +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span> +shows me just how far it has gone,” he cried with a +bitterness which quickly enough made me sober again. +“And I could stand being deliberately shut out of +your life, and shut out of their lives as far as you can +manage it, but I can’t see that it’s doing either them +or you any particular good.”</p> +<p>“But I am responsible for the way in which those +children grow up,” I said, quite innocent of the +<i>double entendre</i> which brought a dark flush to my +husband’s none too happy face.</p> +<p>“And I suppose I’m not to contaminate them?” +he demanded.</p> +<p>“Haven’t you done enough along that line?” I +asked.</p> +<p>He swung about, at that, with something dangerously +like hate on his face.</p> +<p>“Whose children are they?” he challenged.</p> +<p>“You are their father,” I quietly acknowledged. +It rather startled me to find Dinky-Dunk regarding +himself as a fur coat and my offspring as moth-eggs +which I had laid deep in the pelt of his life, where +we were slowly but surely eating the glory out of that +garment and leaving it as bald as a prairie dog’s +belly.</p> +<p>“Well, you give very little evidence of it!” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span></p> +<p>“You can’t expect me to turn a cart-wheel, surely, +every time I remember it?” was my none too gracious +inquiry. Then I sat down. “But what is it you want +me to do?” I asked, as I sat studying his face, and I +felt sorriest for him because he felt sorry for himself.</p> +<p>“That’s exactly the point,” he averred. “There +doesn’t seem anything to do. But this can’t go on +forever.”</p> +<p>“No,” I acknowledged. “It seems too much like +history repeating itself.”</p> +<p>His head went down, at that, and it was quite a +long time before he looked up at me again.</p> +<p>“I don’t suppose you can see it from my side of +the fence?” he asked with a disturbing new note of +humility in his voice.</p> +<p>“Not when you force me to stay on the fence,” I +told him. He seemed to realize, as he sat there +slowly moving his head up and down, that no further +advance was to be made along that line. So he took +a deep breath and sat up.</p> +<p>“Something will have to be done about getting a +new teacher for that school,” he said with an appositeness +which was only too painfully apparent.</p> +<p>“I’ve already spoken to two of the trustees,” I told +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span> +him. “They’re getting a teacher from the Peg. It’s +to be a man this time.”</p> +<p>Instead of meeting my eye, he merely remarked: +“That’ll be better for the boy!”</p> +<p>“In what way?” I inquired.</p> +<p>“Because I don’t think too much petticoat is good +for any boy,” responded my lord and master.</p> +<p>“Big or little!” I couldn’t help amending, in spite +of all my good intentions.</p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk ignored the thrust, though it plainly +took an effort.</p> +<p>“There are times when even kindness can be a +sort of cruelty,” he patiently and somewhat platitudinously +pursued.</p> +<p>“Then I wish somebody would ill-treat me along +that line,” I interjected. And this time he smiled, +though it was only for a moment.</p> +<p>“Supposing we stick to the children,” he suggested.</p> +<p>“Of course,” I agreed. “And since you’ve brought +the matter up I can’t help telling you that I always +felt that my love for my children is the one redeeming +thing in my life.”</p> +<p>“Thanks,” said my husband, with a wince.</p> +<p>“Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m merely trying +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span> +to say that a mother’s love for her children has to +be one of the strongest and holiest things in this hard +old world of ours. And it seems only natural to me +that a woman should consider her children first, and +plan for them, and make sacrifices for them, and fight +for them if she has to.”</p> +<p>“It’s so natural, in fact,” remarked Dinky-Dunk, +“that it has been observed in even the Bengal tigress.”</p> +<p>“It is my turn to thank you,” I acknowledged, +after giving his statement a moment or two of +thought.</p> +<p>“But we’re getting away from the point again,” +proclaimed my husband. “I’ve been trying to tell +you that children are like rabbits: It’s only fit and +proper they should be cared for, but they can’t thrive, +and they can’t even live, if they’re handled too much.”</p> +<p>“I haven’t observed any alarming absence of health +in my children,” I found the courage to say. But +a tightness gathered about my heart, for I could +sniff what was coming.</p> +<p>“They may be all right, as far as that goes,” persisted +their lordly parent. “But what I say is, too +much cuddling and mollycoddling isn’t good for that +boy of yours, or anybody else’s boy.” And he proceeded +to explain that my Dinkie was an ordinary, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span> +every-day, normal child and should be accepted and +treated as such or we’d have a temperamental little +bounder on our hands.</p> +<p>I knew that my boy wasn’t abnormal. But I knew, +on the other hand, that he was an exceptionally impressionable +and sensitive child. And I couldn’t be +sorry for that, for if there’s anything I abhor in this +world it’s torpor. And whatever he may have been, +nothing could shake me in my firm conviction that a +child’s own mother is the best person to watch over +his growth and shape his character.</p> +<p>“But what is all this leading up to?” I asked, steeling +myself for the unwelcome.</p> +<p>“Simply to what I’ve already told you on several +occasions,” was my husband’s answer. “That it’s +about time this boy of ours was bundled off to a +boarding-school.”</p> +<p>I sat back, trying to picture my home and my +life without Dinkie. But it was unbearable. It was +unthinkable.</p> +<p>“I shall never agree to that,” I quietly retorted.</p> +<p>“Why?” asked my husband, with a note of triumph +which I resented.</p> +<p>“For one thing, because he is still a child, because +he is too young,” I contended, knowing that I could +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span> +never agree with Dinky-Dunk in his thoroughly English +ideas of education even while I remembered how +he had once said that the greatness of England depended +on her public-schools, such as Harrow and +Eton and Rugby and Winchester, and that she had +been the best colonizer in the world because her boys +had been taken young and taught not to overvalue +home ties, had been made manlier by getting off +with their own kind instead of remaining hitched to +an apron-string.</p> +<p>“And you prefer keeping him stuck out here on +the prairie?” demanded Dinky-Dunk.</p> +<p>“The prairie has been good enough for his parents, +this last seven or eight years,” I contended.</p> +<p>“It hasn’t been good enough for me,” my husband +cried out with quite unlooked-for passion. “And +I’ve about had my fill of it!”</p> +<p>“Where would you prefer going?” I asked, trying +to speak as quietly as I could.</p> +<p>“That’s something I’m going to find out as soon as +the chance comes,” he retorted with a slow and embittered +emphasis which didn’t add any to my peace of +mind.</p> +<p>“Then why cross our bridges,” I suggested, “until +we come to them?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span></p> +<p>“But you’re not looking for bridges,” he challenged. +“You don’t want to see anything beyond +living like Doukhobours out here on the edge of +Nowhere and remembering that you’ve got your +precious offspring here under your wing and wondering +how many bushels of Number-One-Hard it will +take to buy your Dinkie a riding pinto!”</p> +<p>“Aren’t you rather tired to-night?” I asked with +all the patience I could command.</p> +<p>“Yes, and I’m talking about the thing that makes +me tired. For you know as well as I do that you’ve +made that boy of yours a sort of anesthetic. You +put him on like a nose-cap, and forget the world. +He’s about all you remember to think about. Why, +when you look at the clock, nowadays, it isn’t ten +minutes to twelve. It’s always Dinkie minutes to +Dink. When you read a book you’re only reading +about what your Dinkie might have done or what +your Dinkie is some day to write. When you picture +the Prime Minister it’s merely your Dinkie grown +big, laying down the law to a House of Parliament +made up of other Dinkies, rows and rows of ’em. +When the sun shines you’re wondering whether it’s +warm enough for your Dinkie to walk in, and when +the snow begins to melt you’re wondering whether +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span> +it’s soft enough for the beloved Dinkie to mold into +snowballs. When you see a girl you at once get +busy speculating over whether or not she’ll ever be +beautiful enough for your Dinkie, and when one of +the Crowned Heads of Europe announces the alliance +of its youngest princess you fall to pondering if +Dinkie wouldn’t have made her a better husband. +And when the flowers come out in your window-box +you wonder if they’re fair enough to bloom beside +your Dinkie. I don’t suppose I ever made a haystack +that you didn’t wonder whether it wasn’t going +to be a grand place for Dinkie to slide down. And +when Dinkie draws a goggle-eyed man on his scribbler +you see Michael Angelo totter and Titian turn +in his grave. And when Dinkie writes a composition +of thirty crooked lines on the landing of Hengist you +feel that fate did Hume a mean trick in letting him +pass away before inspecting that final word in historical +record. And heaven’s just a row of Dinkies +with little gold harps tucked under their wings. And +you think you’re breathing air, but all you’re breathing +is Dinkies, millions and millions of etherealized +Dinkies. And when you read about the famine in +China you inevitably and adroitly hitch the death +of seven thousand Chinks in Yangchow on to the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span> +interests of your immortal offspring. And I suppose +Rome really came into being for the one ultimate end +that an immortal young Dinkie might possess his full +degree of Dinkiness and the glory that was Greece +must have been merely the tom-toms tuning up for +the finished dance of our Dinkie’s grandeur. Day +and night, it’s Dinkie, just Dinkie!”</p> +<p>I waited until he was through. I waited, heavy of +heart, until his foolish fires of revolt had burned +themselves out. And it didn’t seem to add to his +satisfaction to find that I could inspect him with a +quiet and slightly commiserative eye.</p> +<p>“You are accusing me,” I finally told him, “of +something I’m proud of. And I’m afraid I’ll always +be guilty of caring for my own son.”</p> +<p>He turned on me with a sort of heavy triumph.</p> +<p>“Well, it’s something that you’ll jolly well pay the +piper for, some day,” he announced.</p> +<p>“What do you mean by that?” I demanded.</p> +<p>“I mean that nothing much is ever gained by letting +the maternal instinct run over. And that’s +exactly what you’re doing. You’re trying to tie +Dinkie to your side, when you can no more tie him +up than you can tie up a sunbeam. You could keep +him close enough to you, of course, when he was small. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span> +But he’s bound to grow away from you as he gets +bigger, just as I grew away from my mother and you +once grew away from yours. It’s a natural law, and +there’s no use crocking your knees on it. The boy’s +got his own life to live, and you can’t live it for him. +It won’t be long, now, before you begin to notice +those quiet withdrawals, those slippings-back into his +own shell of self-interest. And unless you realize +what it means, it’s going to hurt. And unless you +reckon on that in the way you order your life you’re +not only going to be a very lonely old lady but +you’re going to bump into a big hole where you +thought the going was smoothest!”</p> +<p>I sat thinking this over, with a ton of lead where +my heart should have been.</p> +<p>“I’ve already bumped into a big hole where I +thought the going was smoothest,” I finally observed.</p> +<p>My husband looked at me and then looked away +again.</p> +<p>“I was hoping we could fill that up and forget it,” +he ventured in a valorously timid tone which made it +hard, for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom, to keep +my throat from tightening. But I sat there, shaking +my head from side to side. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span></p> +<p>“I’ve got to love something,” I found myself protesting. +“And the children seem all that is left.”</p> +<p>“How about me?” asked my husband, with his +acidulated and slightly one-sided smile.</p> +<p>“You’ve changed, Dinky-Dunk,” was all I could +say.</p> +<p>“But some day,” he contended, “you may wake up +to the fact that I’m still a human being.”</p> +<p>“I’ve wakened up to the fact that you’re a different +sort of human being than I had thought.”</p> +<p>“Oh, we’re all very much alike, once you get our +number,” asserted my husband.</p> +<p>“You mean men are,” I amended.</p> +<p>“I mean that if men can’t get a little warmth and +color and sympathy in the home-circle they’re going +to edge about until they find a substitute for it, no +matter how shoddy it may be,” contended Dinky-Dunk.</p> +<p>“But isn’t that a hard and bitter way of writing +life down to one’s own level?” I asked, trying to +swallow the choke that wouldn’t stay down in my +throat.</p> +<p>“Well, I can’t see that we get much ahead by +trying to sentimentalize the situation,” he said, with +a gesture that seemed one of frustration. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span></p> +<p>We sat staring at each other, and again I had the +feeling of abysmal gulfs of space intervening between +us.</p> +<p>“Is that all you can say about it?” I asked, with +a foolish little gulp I couldn’t control.</p> +<p>“Isn’t it enough?” demanded Dinky-Dunk. And I +knew that nothing was to be gained, that night, by +the foolish and futile clash of words.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span> +<a name='TUESDAY_THE_TWENTYTHIRD' id='TUESDAY_THE_TWENTYTHIRD'></a> +<h2><i>Tuesday the Twenty-Third</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I’ve been doing a good deal of thinking over what +Dinky-Dunk said. I have been trying to see things +from his standpoint. By a sort of mental ju-jutsu +I’ve even been trying to justify what I can’t quite +understand in him. But it’s no use. There’s one +bald, hard fact I can’t escape, no matter how I dig +my old ostrich-beak of instinct under the sands of +self-deception. There’s one cold-blooded truth that +will have to be faced. <i>My husband is no longer in +love with me.</i> Whatever else may have happened, I +have lost my heart-hold on Duncan Argyll McKail. +I am still his wife, in the eyes of the law, and the +mother of his children. We still live together, and, +from force of habit, if from nothing else, go through +the familiar old rites of daily communion. He sits +across the table from me when I eat, and talks casually +enough of the trivially momentous problems of +the minute, or he reads in his slippers before the fire +while I do my sewing within a spool-toss of him. But +a row of invisible assegais stand leveled between his +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span> +heart and mine. A slow glacier of green-iced indifferency +shoulders in between us; and gone forever +is the wild-flower aroma of youth, the singing spirit +of April, the mysterious light that touched our world +with wonder. He is merely a man, drawing on to +middle age, and I am a woman, no longer young. +Gone now are the spring floods that once swept us +together. Gone now is the flame of adoration that +burned clean our altar of daily intercourse and left +us blind to the weaknesses we were too happy to +remember. For there was a time when we loved +each other. I know that as well as Duncan does. +But it died away, that ghostly flame. It went out like +a neglected fire. And blowing on dead ashes can +never revive the old-time glow.</p> +<p>“So they were married and lived happy ever afterward!” +That is the familiar ending to the fairy-tales +I read over and over again to my Dinkie and +Poppsy. But they are fairy-tales. For who lives +happy ever afterward? First love chloroforms us, +for a time, and we try to hug to our bosoms the +illusion that Heaven itself is only a sort of endless +honeymoon presided over by Lohengrin marches. +But the anesthetic wears away and we find that life +isn’t a bed of roses but a rough field that rewards us +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34' name='page_34'></a>34</span> +as we till it, with here and there the cornflower of +happiness laughing unexpectedly up at us out of our +sober acres of sober wheat. And often enough we +don’t know happiness when we see it. We assuredly +find it least where we look for it most. I can’t even +understand why we’re equipped with such a hunger +for it. But I find myself trending more and more +to that cynic philosophy which defines happiness as +the absence of pain. The absence of pain—that is +a lot to ask for, in this life!</p> +<p>I wonder if Dinky-Dunk is right in his implication +that I am getting hard? There are times, I know, +when I grate on him, when he would probably give +anything to get away from me. Yet here we are, +linked together like two convicts. And I don’t believe +I’m as hard as my husband accuses me of being. +However macadamized they may have made life for +me, there’s at least one soft spot in my heart, one +garden under the walls of granite. And that’s the +spot which my two children fill, which my children +keep green, which my children keep holy. It’s them +I think of, when I think of the future—when I should +at least be thinking a little of my grammar and +remembering that the verb “to be” takes the nominative, +just as discontented husbands seem to take +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span> +the initiative! That’s why I can’t quite find the +courage to ask for freedom. I have seen enough of +life to know what the smash-up of a family means to +its toddlers. And I want my children to have a +chance. They can’t have that chance without at +least two things. One is the guardianship of home +life, and the other is that curse of modern times +known as money. We haven’t prospered as we had +hoped to, but heaven knows I’ve kept an eagle eye +on that savings-account of mine, in that absurdly new +and resplendent red-brick bank in Buckhorn. Patiently +I’ve fed it with my butter and egg money, +joyfully I’ve seen it grow with my meager Nitrate +dividends, and grimly I’ve made it bigger with every +loose dollar I could lay my hands on. There’s no +heroism in my going without things I may have +thought I needed, just as there can be little nobility +in my sticking to a husband who no longer loves me. +For it’s not Chaddie McKail who counts now, but her +chicks. And I’ll have to look for my reward through +them, for I’m like Romanes’ rat now, too big to get +into the bottle of cream, but wary enough to know +I can dine from a tail still small enough for insertion. +I’m merely a submerged prairie-hen with the best +part of her life behind her. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span></p> +<p>But it bothers me, what Duncan says about my +always thinking of little Dinkie first. And I’m +afraid I do, though it seems neither right nor fair. +I suppose it’s because he was my first-born—and +having come first in my life he must come first in my +thoughts. I was made to love somebody—and my +husband doesn’t seem to want me to love him. So +he has driven me to centering my thoughts on the +child. I’ve got to have something to warm up to. +And any love I may lavish on this prairie-chick of +mine, who has to face life with the lack of so many +things, will not only be a help to the boy, but will be +a help to me, the part of Me that I’m sometimes so +terribly afraid of.</p> +<p>Yet I can’t help wondering if Duncan has any +excuses for claiming that it’s personal selfishness +which prompts me to keep my boy close to my side. +And am I harming him, without knowing it, in keeping +him here under my wing? Schools are all right, +in a way, but surely a good mother can do as much in +the molding of a boy’s mind as a boarding-school +with a file of Ph.D.’s on its staff. But am I a good +mother? And should I trust myself, in a matter like +this, to my own feelings? Men, in so many things, +are better judges than women. Yet it has just +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span> +occurred to me that all men do not think alike. I’ve +been sitting back and wondering what kindly old +Peter would say about it. And I’ve decided to write +Peter and ask what he advises. He’ll tell the truth, +I know, for Peter is as honest as the day is long....</p> +<p>I’ve just been up to make sure the children were +properly covered in bed. And it disturbed me a +little to find that without even thinking about it I +went to Dinkie first. It seemed like accidental corroboration +of all that Duncan has been saying. But +I stood studying him as he lay there asleep. It +frightened me a little, to find him so big. If it’s true, +as Duncan threatens, that time will tend to turn +him away from me, it’s something that I’m going to +fight tooth and nail. And I’ve seen no sign of it, as +yet. With every month and every year that’s added +to his age he grows more companionable, more able +to bridge the chasm between two human souls. We +have more interests in common, more things to talk +about. And day by day Dinkie is reaching up to my +clumsily mature way of looking at life. He can +come to me with his problems, knowing I’ll always +give him a hearing, just as he used to come to me +with his baby cuts and bruises, knowing they would +be duly kissed and cared for. Yet some day, I have +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span> +just remembered, he may have problems that can’t +be brought to me. But that day, please God, I shall +defer as long as possible. Already we have our own +little secrets and private compacts and understandings. +I don’t want my boy to be a mollycoddle. But +I want him to have his chance in the world. I want +him to be somebody. I can’t reconcile myself to the +thought of him growing up to wear moose-mittens +and shoe-packs and stretching barb-wire in blue-jeans +and riding a tractor across a prairie back-township. +I refuse to picture him getting bent and +gray wringing a livelihood out of an over-cropped +ranch fourteen miles away from a post-office and a +world away from the things that make life most worth +living. If he were an ordinary boy, I might be led +to think differently. But my Dinkie is not an ordinary +boy. There’s a spark of the unusual, of the +exceptional, in that laddie. And I intend to fan +that spark, whatever the cost may be, until it breaks +out into genius.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_TWENTYEIGHTH' id='SUNDAY_THE_TWENTYEIGHTH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Twenty-Eighth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I’ve had scant time for introspection during the +last five days, for Struthers has been in bed with +lumbago, and the weight of the housework reverted +to me. But Whinstane Sandy brought his precious +bottle of Universal Ointment in from the bunk-house, +and while that fiery mixture warmed her lame back, +the thought of its origin probably warmed her lonely +heart. I have suddenly wakened up to the fact that +Struthers is getting on a bit. She is still the same +efficient and self-obliterating mainstay of the kitchen +that she ever was, but she grows more “sot” in her +ways, more averse to any change in her daily routine, +and more despairing of ever finally and completely +capturing that canny old Scotsman whom we still so +affectionately designate as Whinnie, in short for +Whinstane Sandy. Whinnie, I’m afraid, still nurses +the fixed idea that everything in petticoats and as yet +unwedded is after him. And it is only by walking +with the utmost circumspection that he escapes their +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span> +wiles and by maintaining an unbroken front withstands +their unseemly advances.</p> +<p>The new school-teacher has arrived, and is to live +with us here at Casa Grande. I have my reasons for +this. In the first place, it will be a help to Dinkie in +his studies. In the second place, it means that the +teacher can pack my boy back and forth to school, +in bad weather, and next month when Poppsy joins +the ranks of the learners, can keep a more personal +eye on that little tot’s movements. And in the third +place the mere presence of another male at Casa +Grande seems to dilute the acids of home life.</p> +<p>Gershom Binks is the name of this new teacher, and +I have just learned that in the original Hebrew +“Gershom” not inappropriately means “a stranger +there.” He is a sophomore (a most excellent word, +that, when you come to inquire into its etymology!) +from the University of Minnesota and is compelled to +teach the young idea, for a time, to accumulate sufficient +funds to complete his course, which he wants +to do at Ann Arbor. And Gershom is a very tall +and very thin and very short-sighted young man, +with an Adam’s apple that works up and down with +a two-inch plunge over the edge of his collar when he +talks—which he does somewhat extensively. He wears +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span> +glasses with big bulging lenses, glasses which tend to +hide a pair of timid and brown-October-aleish eyes +with real kindliness in them. He looks ill-nourished, +but I can detect nothing radically wrong with his +appetite. It’s merely that, like Cassius, he thinks too +much. And I’m going to fatten that boy up a bit, +before the year is out, or know the reason why. He +may be a trifle self-conscious and awkward, but he’s +also amazingly clean of both body and mind, and it +will be no hardship, I know, to have him under our +roof. And for all his devotion to Science, he reads +his Bible every night—which is more than Chaddie +McKail does! He rather took the wind out of my +sails by demanding, the first morning at breakfast, +if I knew that one half-ounce of the web of the spider—the +arachnid of the order <i>Araneida</i>, he explained—if +stretched out in a straight line would reach from +the city of Chicago to the city of Paris. I told him +that this was a most wonderful and a most interesting +piece of information and hoped that some day we +could verify it by actual test. Yet when I inquired +whether he meant merely the environs of the city of +Paris, or the very heart of the city such as the Place +de l’Opéra, he studied me with the meditative eye +with which Huxley must have once studied beetles. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42' name='page_42'></a>42</span></p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk, I notice, is as restive as a bull-moose +in black-fly season. He’s doing his work on the land, +as about every ranch-owner has to, whether he’s happily +married or not, but he’s doing it without any +undue impression of its epical importance. I heard +him observe, yesterday, that if he could only get his +hands on enough ready money he’d like to swing into +land business in a live center like Calgary. He has +a friend there, apparently, who has just made a +clean-up in city real estate and bought his wife a +Detroit Electric and built a home for himself that +cost forty thousand dollars. I reminded Dinky-Dunk, +when he had finished, that we really must have +a new straining-mesh in the milk-separator. He +merely looked at me with a sour and morose eye as +he got up and went out to his team.</p> +<p>Surely these men-folks are a dissatisfied lot! Gershom +to-night complained that his own name of +“Gershom Binks” impressed him as about the ugliest +name that was ever hitched on to a scholar and a +gentlemen. And later on, after I’d opened my piano +and tried to console myself with a tu’penny draught +of Grieg, he inspected the instrument and informed +me that it was really evolved from the six-stringed +harps of the fourth Egyptian dynasty, which in the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span> +fifth dynasty was made with a greatly enlarged base, +thus giving the rudimentary beginning of a soundboard.</p> +<p>I am learning a lot from Gershom! And so are my +kiddies, for that matter. I begin, in fact, to feel +like royalty with a private tutor, for every night +now Dinkie and Poppsy and Gershom sit about the +living-room table and drink of the founts of wisdom. +But we have a teacher here who loves to teach. And +he is infinitely patient and kind with my little toddlers. +Dinkie already asks him questions without +number, while Poppsy gratefully but decorously +vamps him with her infantine gazes. Then Gershom—Heaven +bless his scholastic old high-browed solemnity—has +just assured me that Dinkie betrays many +evidences of an exceptionally bright mind.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span> +<a name='FRIDAY_THE_SECOND' id='FRIDAY_THE_SECOND'></a> +<h2><i>Friday the Second</i></h2> +</div> +<p>My husband yesterday accused me of getting moss-backed. +He had been harping on the city string +again and asked me if I intended to live and die a +withered beauty on a back-trail ranch.</p> +<p>That “withered beauty” hurt, though I did my +best to ignore it, for the time at least. And Dinky-Dunk +went on to say that it struck him as one of +life’s little ironies that <i>I</i> should want to stick to the +sort of life we were leading, remembering what I’d +come from.</p> +<p>“Dinky-Dunk,” I told him, “it’s terribly hard to +explain exactly how I feel about it all. I suppose I +could never make you see it as I see it. But it’s a +feeling like loyalty, loyalty to the land that’s given us +what we have. And it’s also a feeling of disliking to +see one old rule repeating itself: what has once been +a crusade becoming merely a business. To turn and +leave our land now, it seems to me, would make us +too much like those soulless soil-robbers you used to +rail at, like those squatters who’ve merely squeezed +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span> +out what they could and have gone on, like those land-miners +who take all they can get and stand ready to +put nothing back. Why, if we were all like that, +we’d have no country here. We’d be a wilderness, a +Barren Grounds that went from the Border up to the +Circle. But there’s something bigger than that about +it all. I love the prairie. Just why it is, I don’t +know. It’s too fundamental to be fashioned into +words, and I never realized how deep it was until I +went back to the city that time. One can just say +it, and let it go at that: <i>I love the prairie.</i> It isn’t +merely its bigness, just as it isn’t altogether its freedom +and its openness. Perhaps it’s because it keeps +its spirit of the adventurous. I love it the same as my +children love <i>The Arabian Nights</i> and <i>The Swiss +Family Robinson</i>. I thought it was mostly cant, +once, that cry about being next to nature, but the +more I know about nature the more I feel with Pope +that naught but man is vile, to speak as impersonally, +my dear Diddums, as the occasion will permit. I’m +afraid I’m like that chickadee that flew into the bunk-house +and Whinnie caught and put in a box-cage +for Dinkie. I nearly die at the thought of being +cooped up. I want clean air and open space about +me.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span></p> +<p>“I never dreamed you’d been Indianized to that +extent,” murmured my husband.</p> +<p>“Being Indianized,” I proceeded, “seems to carry +the inference of also being barbarized. But it isn’t +quite that, Dinky-Dunk, for there’s something almost +spiritually satisfying about this prairie life if you’ve +only got the eyes to see it. I think that’s because the +prairie always seems so majestically beautiful to me. +I can see your lip curl again, but I know I’m right. +When I throw open my windows of a morning and +see that placid old never-ending plain under its great +wash of light something lifts up in my breast, like a +bird, and no matter how a mere man has been doing +his best to make me miserable that something stands +up on the tip of my heart and does its darnedest to +sing. It impresses me as life on such a sane and +gigantic scale that I want to be an actual part of it, +that I positively ache to have a share in its immensities. +It seems so fruitful and prodigal and generous +and patient. It’s so open-handed in the way it produces +and gives and returns our love. And there’s a +completeness about it that makes me feel it can’t +possibly be wrong.”</p> +<p>“The Eskimo, I suppose, feels very much the same +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span> +in his little igloo of ice with a pot of whale-blubber +at his elbow,” observed my husband.</p> +<p>“You’re a brute, my dear Diddums, and more +casually cruel than a Baffin-land cannibal,” I retorted. +“But we’ll let it pass. For I’m talking about +something that’s too fundamental to be upset by a +bitter tongue. There was a time, I know, when I used +to fret about the finer things I thought I was losing +out of life, about the little hand-made fripperies +people have been forced to conjure up and carpenter +together to console them for having to live in human +beehives made of steel and concrete. But I’m beginning +to find out that joy isn’t a matter of geography +and companionship isn’t a matter of over-crowded +subways. And the strap-hangers and the train-catchers +and the first-nighters can have what they’ve +got. I don’t seem to envy them the way I used to. I +don’t need a Louvre when I’ve got the Northern +Lights to look at. And I can get along without an +Æolian Hall when I’ve got a little music in my own +heart—for it’s only what you’ve got there, after all, +that really counts in this world!”</p> +<p>“All of which means,” concluded my husband, “that +you are most unmistakably growing old!” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span></p> +<p>“You have already,” I retorted, “referred to me +as a withered beauty.”</p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk studied me long and intently. I even +felt myself turning pink under that prolonged stare +of appraisal.</p> +<p>“You are still easy to look at,” he over-slangily +and over-generously admitted. “But I do regret that +you aren’t a little easier to live with!”</p> +<p>I could force a little laugh, at that, but I couldn’t +quite keep a tremor out of my voice when I spoke +again.</p> +<p>“I’m sorry you see only my bad side, Dinky-Dunk. +But it’s kindness that seems to bring everything that +is best out of us women. We’re terribly like sliced +pineapple in that respect: give us just a sprinkling +of sugar, and out come all the juices!”</p> +<p>It was Dinky-Dunk’s color that deepened a little +as he turned and knocked out his pipe.</p> +<p>“That’s a Chaddie McKail argument,” he merely +observed as he stood up. “And a Chaddie McKail +argument impresses me as suspiciously like Swiss +cheese: it doesn’t seem to be genuine unless you can +find plenty of holes in it.”</p> +<p>I did my best to smile at his humor. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span></p> +<p>“But this isn’t an argument,” I quietly corrected. +“I’d look at it more in the nature of an ultimatum.”</p> +<p>That brought him up short, as I had intended it +to do. He stood worrying over it as Bobs and +Scotty worry over a bone.</p> +<p>“I’m afraid,” he finally intoned, “I’ve been repeatedly +doing you the great injustice of underestimating +your intelligence!”</p> +<p>“That,” I told him, “is a point where I find silence +imposed upon me.”</p> +<p>He didn’t speak until he got to the door.</p> +<p>“Well, I’m glad we’ve cleared the air a bit anyway,” +he said with a grim look about his Holbein Astronomer +old mouth as he went out.</p> +<p>But we haven’t cleared the air. And it disturbs me +more than I can say to find that I have reservations +from my husband. It bewilders me to see that I can’t +be perfectly candid with him. But there are certain +deeper feelings that I can no longer uncover in his +presence. Something holds me back from explaining +to him that this fixed dread of mine for all cities is +largely based on my loss of little Pee-Wee. For if +I hadn’t gone to New York that time, to Josie Langdon’s +wedding, I might never have lost my boy. They +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span> +did the best they could, I suppose, before their telegrams +brought me back, but they didn’t seem to +understand the danger. And little did I dream, +before the Donnelly butler handed me that first +startling message just as we were climbing into the +motor to go down to the Rochambeau to meet Chinkie +and Tavvy, that within a week I was to sit and watch +the cruelest thing that can happen in this world. I +was to see a small child die. I was to watch my own +Pee-Wee pass quietly away.</p> +<p>I have often wondered, since, why I never shed a +tear during all those terrible three days. I couldn’t, +in some way, though the nurse herself was crying, and +poor old Whinnie and Struthers were sobbing together +next to the window, and dour old Dinky-Dunk, +on the other side of the bed, was racking his shoulders +with smothered sobs as he held the little white hand +in his and the warmth went forever out of the little +fingers where his foolish big hand was trying to hold +back the life that couldn’t be kept there. The old +are ready to die, or can make themselves ready. They +have run their race and had their turn at living. But +it seems cruel hard to see a little tot, with eagerness +still in his heart, taken away, taken away with the +wonder of things still in his eyes. It stuns you. It +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span> +makes you rebel. It leaves a scar that Time itself +can never completely heal.</p> +<p>Yet through it all I can still hear the voice of +valorous old Whinnie as he patted my shoulder and +smiled with the brine still in the seams of his furrowed +old face. “We’ll thole through, lassie; we’ll thole +through!” he said over and over again. Yes; we’ll +thole through. And this is only the uncovering of +old wounds. And one must keep one’s heart and one’s +house in order, for with us we still have the living.</p> +<p>But Dinky-Dunk can’t completely understand, +I’m afraid, this morbid hankering of mine to keep +my family about me, to have the two chicks that are +left to me close under my wing. And never once, since +Pee-Wee went, have I actually punished either of my +children. It may be wrong, but I can’t help it. I +don’t want memories of violence to be left corroding +and rankling in my mind. And I’d hate to see any +child of mine cringe, like an ill-treated dog, at every +lift of the hand. There are better ways of controlling +them, I begin to feel, than through fear. Their +father, I know, will never agree with me on this matter. +He will always insist on mastery, open and +undisputed mastery, in his own house. He is the +head of this Clan McKail, the sovereign of this little +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span> +circle. For we can say what we will about democracy, +but when a child is born unto a man that man unconsciously +puts on the purple. He becomes the ruler +and sits on the throne of authority. He even seeks +to cloak his weaknesses and his mistakes in that +threadbare old fabrication about the divine right of +kings. But I can see that he is often wrong, and +even my Dinkie can see that he is not always right in +his decrees. More and more often, of late, I’ve observed +the boy studying his father, studying him with +an impersonal and critical eye. And this habit of +silent appraisal is plainly something which Duncan +resents, and resents keenly. He’s beginning to have a +feeling, I’m afraid, that he can’t quite get <i>at</i> the boy. +And there’s a youthful shyness growing up in Dinkie +which seems to leave him ashamed of any display of +emotion before his father. I can see that it even +begins to exasperate Duncan a little, to be shut out +behind those incontestable walls of reserve. It’s +merely, I’m sure, that the child is so terribly afraid +of ridicule. He already nurses a hankering to be +regarded as one of the grown-ups and imagines +there’s something rather babyish in any undue show +of feeling. Yet he is hungry for affection. And he +aches, I know, for the approbation of his male parent, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span> +for the approval of a full-grown man whom he can +regard as one of his own kind. He even imitates his +father in the way in which he stands in front of the +fire, with his heels well apart. And he gives me chills +up the spine by pulling short on one bridle-rein and +making Buntie, his mustang-pony, pirouette just as +the wicked-tempered Briquette sometimes pirouettes +when his father is in the saddle. Yet Dinky-Dunk’s +nerves are a bit ragged and there are times when he’s +not always just with the boy, though it’s not for me +to confute what the instinctive genius of childhood +has already made reasonably clear to Dinkie’s discerning +young eye. But I can not, of course, encourage +insubordination. All I can do is to ignore the +unwelcome and try to crowd it aside with happier +things. I want my boy to love me, as I love him. +And I think he does. I <i>know</i> he does. That knowledge +is an azure and bottomless lake into which I +can toss my blackest pebbles of fear, my flintiest +doubts of the future.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_FOURTH' id='SUNDAY_THE_FOURTH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Fourth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I wish I could get by the scruff of the neck that +sophomoric old philosopher who once said nothing +survives being thought of. For I’ve been learning, +this last two or three days, just how wide of the +mark he shot. And it’s all arisen out of Dinky-Dunk’s +bland intimation that I am “a withered +beauty.” Those words have held like a fish-hook in +the gills of my memory. If they’d come from somebody +else they mightn’t have meant so much. But +from one’s own husband—Wow!—they go in like a +harpoon. And they have given me a great deal to +think about. There are times, I find, when I can +accept that intimation of slipping into the sere and +yellow leaf without revolt. Then the next moment it +fills me with a sort of desperation. I refuse to go up +on the shelf. I see red and storm against age. I +refuse to bow to the inevitable. My spirit recoils +at the thought of decay. For when you’re fading +you’re surely decaying, and when you’re decaying +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span> +you’re approaching the end. So stop, Father Time, +stop, or I’ll get out of the car!</p> +<p>But we can’t get out of the car. That’s the tragic +part of it. We have to go on, whether we like it or +not. We have to buck up, and grin and bear it, and +make the best of a bad bargain. And Heaven knows +I’ve never wanted to be one of the Glooms! I’ve no +hankering to sit with the Sob Sisters and pump +brine over the past. I’m light-hearted enough if +they’ll only give me a chance. I’ve always believed in +getting what we could out of life and looking on the +sunny side of things. And the disturbing part of it +is, I don’t <i>feel</i> withered—not by a jugful! There +are mornings when I can go about my homely old +duties singing like a prairie Tetrazzini. There are +days when I could do a hand-spring, if for nothing +more than to shock my solemn old Dinky-Dunk out +of his dourness. There are times when we go skimming +along the trail with the crystal-cool evening +air in our faces and the sun dipping down toward the +rim of the world when I want to thank Somebody I +can’t see for Something-or-other I can’t define. <i>Dum +vivimus vivamus.</i></p> +<p>But it seems hard to realize that I’m a sedate and +elderly lady already on the shady side of thirty. A +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span> +woman over thirty years old—and I can remember +the days of my intolerant youth when I regarded the +woman of thirty as an antiquated creature who should +be piously preparing herself for the next world. And +it doesn’t take thirty long to slip into forty. And +then forty merges into fifty—and there you are, a +nice old lady with nervous indigestion and knitting-needles +and a tendency to breathe audibly after +ascending the front-stairs. No wonder, last night, it +drove me to taking a volume of George Moore down +from the shelf and reading his chapter on “The +Woman of Thirty.” But I found small consolation +in that over-uxorious essay, feeling as I did that I +knew life quite as well as any amorous studio-rat +who ever made copy out of his mottled past. So I +was driven, in the end, to studying myself long and +intently in the broken-hinged mirrors of my dressing-table. +And I didn’t find much there to fortify my +quailing spirit. I was getting on a bit. I was curling +up a little around the edges. There was no denying +that fact. For I could see a little fan-light of lines +at the outer corner of each eye. And down what +Dinky-Dunk once called the honeyed corners of my +mouth went another pair of lines which clearly came +from too much laughing. But most unmistakably of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span> +all there was a line coming under my chin, a small but +tell-tale line, announcing the fact that I wasn’t losing +any in weight, and standing, I suppose, one of the +foot-hills which precede the Rocky-Mountain dewlaps +of old age. It wouldn’t be long, I could see, before +I’d have to start watching my diet, and looking for +a white hair or two, and probably give up horseback +riding. And then settle down into an ingle-nook old +dowager with a hassock under <i>my</i> feet and a creak in +my knees and a fixed conviction that young folks +never acted up in <i>my</i> youth as they act up nowadays.</p> +<p>I tried to laugh it away, but my heart went down +like a dredge-dipper. Whereupon I set my jaw, +which didn’t make me look any younger. But I didn’t +much care, for the mirror had already done its worst.</p> +<p>“Not muchee!” I said as I sat there making faces +at myself. “You’re still one of the living. The +bloom may be off in a place or two, but you’re sound +to the core, and serviceable for many a year. So +<i>sursum corda! ‘Rung ho! Hira Singh!</i>’ as Chinkie +taught us to shout in the old polo days. And that +means, Go in and win, Chaddie McKail, and die with +your boots on if you have to.”</p> +<p>I was still intent on that study of my robust-looking +but slightly weather-beaten map when Dinky-Dunk +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span> +walked in and caught me in the middle of my +Narcissus act.</p> +<p>“‘All is vanity saith the Preacher,’” he began. +But he stopped short when I swung about at him. +For I hadn’t, after all, been able to carpenter together +even a whale-boat of consolation out of my +wrecked schooner of hope.</p> +<p>“Oh, Kakaibod,” I wailed, “I’m a pie-faced old has-been, +and nobody will ever love me again!”</p> +<p>He only laughed, on his way out, and announced +that I seemed to be getting my share of loving, as +things went. But he didn’t take back what he said +about me being withered. And the first thing I shall +do to-morrow, when Gershom comes down to breakfast, +will be to ask him how old Cleopatra was when +she brought Antony to his knees and how antiquated +Ninon D’Enclos was when she lost her power over +that semi-civilized creature known as Man. Gershom +will know, for Gershom knows everything.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span> +<a name='WEDNESDAY_THE_SEVENTH' id='WEDNESDAY_THE_SEVENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Wednesday the Seventh</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Gershom has been studying some of my carbon-prints. +He can’t for the life of him understand why +I consider Dewing’s <i>Old-fashioned Gown</i> so beautiful, +or why I should love Childe Hassam’s <i>Church at Old +Lyme</i> or see anything remarkable about Metcalf’s +<i>May Night</i>. But I cherish them as one cherishes +photographs of lost friends.</p> +<p>A couple of the Horatio Walker’s, he acknowledged, +seemed to mean something to him. But Gershom’s +still in the era when he demands a story in +the picture and could approach Monet and Degas +only by way of Meissonier and Bouguereau. And a +print, after all, is only a print. He’s slightly ashamed +to admire beauty as mere beauty, contending that at +the core of all such things there should be a moral. +So we pow-wowed for an hour and more over the +threadbare old theme and the most I could get out +of Gershom was that the lady in <i>The Old-fashioned +Gown</i> reminded him of me, only I was more vital. +But all that talk about landscape and composition +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span> +and line and tone made me momentarily homesick for a +glimpse of Old Lyme again, before I go to my reward.</p> +<p>But the mood didn’t last. And I no longer regret +what’s lost. I don’t know what mysterious Divide +it is I have crossed over, but it seems to be peace I +want now instead of experience. I’m no longer envious +of the East and all it holds. I’m no longer +fretting for wider circles of life. The lights may be +shining bright on many a board-walk, at this moment, +but it means little to this ranch-lady. What I want +now is a better working-plan for that which has +already been placed before me. Often and often, in +the old days, when I realized how far away from the +world this lonely little island of Casa Grande and its +inhabitants stood, I used to nurse a ghostly envy for +the busier tideways of life from which we were banished. +I used to feel that grandeur was in some way +escaping me. I could picture what was taking place +in some of those golden-gray old cities I had known: +The Gardens of the Luxembourg when the horse-chestnuts +were coming out in bloom, and the Château +de Madrid in the Bois at the luncheon hour, or the +Pre Catalan on a Sunday with heavenly sole in lemon +and melted butter and a still more heavenly waltz as +you sat eating <i>fraises des bois</i> smothered in thick +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span> +<i>crême d’Isigny</i>. Or the Piazzi di Spagna on Easter +Sunday with the murmur of Rome in your ears and +the cars and carriages flashing through the green-gold +shadows of the Pincio. Or Hyde Park in May, +with the sun sifting through the brave old trees and +flashing on the helmets of the Life Guards as the King +goes by in a scarlet uniform with the blue Order of +the Garter on his breast, or Park Lane on a glorious +light-and-shadow afternoon in June and a dip into +the familiar old Americanized clangor at the Cecil; +or Chinkie’s place in Devonshire about a month +earlier, sitting out on the terrace wrapped in +steamer-rugs and waiting for the moon to come up +and the first nightingale to sing. Of Fifth Avenue +shining almost bone-white in the clear December sunlight +and the salted nuts and orange-blossom cocktails +at Sherry’s, or the Plaza tea-room at about +five o’clock in the afternoon with the smell of Turkish +tobacco and golden pekoe and hot-house violets and +Houbigant’s <i>Quelque-fleurs</i> all tangled up together. +Or the City of Wild Parsley in March with a wave +of wild flowers breaking over the ruins of Selinunte +and the tumbling pillars of the Temple of Olympian +Zeus lying time-mellowed in the clear Sicilian sunlight! +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span></p> +<p>They were all lovely enough, and still are, I suppose, +but it’s a loveliness in some way involved with +youth. So the memory of those far-off gaieties, +which, after all, were so largely physical, no longer +touch me with unrest. They’re wine that’s drunk and +water that’s run under the bridge. Younger lips can +drink of that cup, which was sweet enough in its time. +Let the newer girls dance their legs off under the +French crystals of the Ritz, and powder their noses +over the Fountain of the Sunken Boat, and eat the +numbered duck so reverentially doled out at La Tour +d’Argent and puff their cigarettes behind the beds of +begonias and marguerites at the Château Madrid. +They too will get tired of it, and step aside for others. +For the petal falls from the blossom and the blossom +plumps out into fruit. And all those golden girls, +when their day is over, must slip away from those +gardens of laughter. When they don’t, they only +make themselves ridiculous. For there’s nothing +sadder than an antique lady of other days decking +herself out in the furbelows of a lost youth. And I’ve +got Dinky-Dunk’s overalls to patch and my bread to +set, so I can’t think much more about it to-night. +But after I’ve done my chores, and before I go up to +bed, I’m going to read <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i> right through +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span> +to the end. I’ll do it in front of the fire, with my +feet up and with three Ontario Northern Spy apples +on a plate beside me, to be munched as Audrey herself +might have munched them, oblivious of any +Touchstone and his reproving eyes.</p> +<p>I have stopped to ponder, however, how much of +this morbid dread of mine for big cities is due to +that short and altogether unsatisfactory visit to New +York, to that sense of coming back a stranger and +finding old friends gone and those who were left with +such entirely new interests.</p> +<p>I was out of it, completely and dishearteningly out +of it. And my clothes were all wrong. My hats +were wrong; my shoes were wrong; and every rag I +had on me was in some way wrong. I was a tourist +from the provinces. And I wasn’t up-to-date with +either what was on me or was <i>in</i> me. I didn’t even +know the new subway routes or the telephone rules or +the proper places to go for tea. The Metropolitan +looked cramped and shoddy and <i>Tristan</i> seemed shoddily +sung to me. There was no thrill to it. And +even <i>The Jewels of the Madonna</i> impressed me as a +bit garish and off color, with the Apache Dance of +the last act almost an affront to God and man. I +even asked myself, when I found that I had lost the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span> +trick of laughing at bridal-suite farces, if it was the +possession of children that had changed me. For +when you’re with children you must in some way +match their snowy innocence with a kindred coloring +of innocence, very much as the hare and the weasel +and the ptarmigan turn white to match the whiteness +of our northern winter. Yet I was able to wring pure +joy out of Rachmaninoff’s playing at Carnegie Hall, +with a great man making music for music’s sake. I +loved the beauty and balance and splendid sanity of +that playing, without keyboard fire-works and dazzle +and glare. But Rachmaninoff was the exception. +Even Central Park seemed smaller than of old, and I +couldn’t remember which drives Dinky-Dunk and I +had taken in the historic old hansom-cab after our +equally historic marriage by ricochet. Fifth Avenue +itself was different, the caterpillar of trade having +crawled a little farther up the stalk of fashion, for +the shops, I found, went right up to the Park, and +the old W. K. house where we once danced our long-forgotten +Dresden China Quadrille, in imitation of +the equally forgotten Eighty-Three event, confronted +me as a beehive of business offices. I couldn’t quite +get used to the new names and the new faces and the +new shops and the side-street theaters and the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span> +thought of really nice girls going to a prize-fight in +Madison Square Garden, and the eternal and never-ending +talk about drinks, about where and how to +get them, and how to mix them, and how much +Angostura to put into ’em, and the musty ale that +used to be had at Losekam’s in Washington, and the +<i>Beaux Arts</i> cocktails that used to come with a dash +of absinthe, and the shipment of pinch-neck Scotch +which somebody smuggled in on his cruiser-yacht +from the east end of Cuba, and so-forth and so-forth +until I began to feel that the only important thing in +the world was the possession and dispensation of +alcohol. And out of it I got the headache without +getting the fun. I had the same dull sense of being +cheated which came to me in my flapper days when +I fell asleep with a mouthful of contraband gum and +woke up in the morning with my jaw-muscles tired—I’d +been facing all the exertion without getting any +of the satisfaction.</p> +<p>The one bright spot to me, in that lost city of my +childhood, was the part of Madison Avenue which +used to be known as Murray Hill, the right-of-way +along the west sidewalk of which I once commandeered +for an afternoon’s coasting. I could see again, as I +glanced down the familiar slope, the puffy figure of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span> +old Major Elmes, who in those days was always pawing +somebody, since he seemed to believe with Novalis +that he touched heaven when he placed his hand on a +human body. I could see myself sky-hooting down +that icy slope on my coaster, approaching the old +Major from the rear and peremptorily piping out: +“One side, please!” For I was young then, and I +expected all life to make way for me. But the old +Major betrayed no intention of altering his solemnly +determined course at any such juvenile suggestion, +with the result that he sat down on me bodily, and +for the next two blocks approached his club in Madison +Square in a manner and at a speed which he had +in no wise anticipated. But, <i>Eheu</i>, how long ago it +all seemed!</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span> +<a name='SATURDAY_THE_TENTH' id='SATURDAY_THE_TENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Saturday the Tenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Peter has written back in answer to my question +as to the expediency of sending my boy off to a +boarding-school. He put all he had to say in two +lines. They were:</p> +<p>“<i>I had a mother like Dinkie’s, I’d stick to her +until the stars were dust.</i>”</p> +<p>That was very nice of Peter, of course, but I don’t +imagine he had any idea of the peck of trouble he +was going to stir up at Casa Grande. For Dinky-Dunk +picked up the sheet of paper on which that +light-hearted message had been written and perused +the two lines, perused them with a savagery which +rather disturbed me. He read them for the second +time, and then he put them down. His eye, as he +confronted me, was a glacial one.</p> +<p>“It’s too bad we can’t run this show without the +interference of outsiders,” he announced as he stalked +out of the room.</p> +<p>I’ve been thinking the thing over, and trying to +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span> +get my husband’s view-point. But I can’t quite succeed. +There has always been a touch of the satyric +in Dinky-Dunk’s attitude toward Peter’s weekly +letter to my boy. He has even intimated that they +were written in a new kind of Morse, the inference +being that they were intended to carry messages in +cipher to eyes other than Dinkie’s. But Peter is +much too honest a man for any such resort to subterfuge. +And Dinky-Dunk has always viewed with +a hostile eye the magazines and books and toys which +big-hearted Peter has showered out on us. Peter +always was ridiculously open-handed. And he always +loved my Dinkie. And it’s only natural that our +thoughts should turn back to where our love has +been left. Peter, I know, gets quite as much fun out +of those elaborately playful letters to Dinkie as +Dinkie does himself. And it’s left the boy more +anxious to learn, to the end that he may pen a more +respectable reply to them.</p> +<p>Some of Peter’s gifts, it is true, have been embarrassingly +ornate, but Peter, who has been given so +much, must have remembered how little has come to +my kiddies. It was my intention, for a while, to talk +this over with Dinky-Dunk, to try to make him see +it in a more reasonable light. But I have now given +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span> +up that intention. There’s a phantasmal something +that holds me back....</p> +<p>I dreamt last night that my little Dinkie was a +grown youth in a Greek academy, wearing a toga +and sitting on a marble bench overlooking a sea of +lovely sapphire. There both Peter and Percy, also +arrayed in togas, held solemn discourse with my offspring +and finally agreed that once they were through +with him he would be the Wonder of the Age....</p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk asked me point-blank to-day if I’d +consider the sale of Casa Grande, provided he got +the right price for the ranch. I felt, for a moment, +as though the bottom had been knocked out of my +world. But it showed me the direction in which my +husband’s thoughts have been running of late. And +I just as pointedly retorted that I’d never consent +to the sale of Casa Grande. It’s not merely because +it’s our one and only home. It’s more because of the +little knoll where the four Manitoba maples have +been set and the row of prairie-roses have been +planted along the little iron fence, the little iron +fence which twice a year I paint a virginal white, +with my own hands. For that’s where my Pee-Wee +sleeps, and that lonely little grave must never pass +out of my care, to be forgotten and neglected and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span> +tarnished with time. It’s not a place of sorrow now, +but more an altar, duly tended, the flower-covered +bed of my Pee-Wee, of my poor little Pee-Wee who +was so brimming with life and love. He used to make +me think of a humming-bird in a garden—and now +all I have left of him is my small chest of toys and +trinkets and baby-clothes. God, I know, will be +good to that lonely little newcomer in His world of +the statelier dead, in His gallery of whispering +ghosts. Oh, be good to him, God! Be good to him, +or You shall be no God of mine! I can’t think of +him as dead, as going out like a candle, as melting +into nothingness as the little bones under their six +feet of earth molder away. But my laddie is gone. +And I must not be morbid. As Peter once said, +misery loves company, but the company is apt to +seek more convivial quarters. Yet something has +gone out of my life, and that something drives me +back to my Dinkie and my Poppsy with a sort of +fierceness in my hunger to love them, to make the +most of them.</p> +<p>Gershom, who has been giving Poppsy a daily +lesson at home, has just inquired why she shouldn’t +be sent to school along with Dinkie. And her father +has agreed. It gave me the wretched feeling, for a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span> +moment or two, that they were conspiring to take +my last baby away from me. But I have to bow +to the fact that I no longer possess one, since Poppsy +announced her preference, the other day, for a doll +“with real livings in it.” She begins to show as +fixed an aversion to baby-talk as that entertained by +old Doctor Johnson himself, and no longer yearns +to “do yidin on the team-tars,” as she used to express +it. The word “birthday” is still “birfday” with her, +and “water” is still “wagger,” but she now religiously +eschews all such reiterative diminutives as +“roundy-poundy” and “Poppsy-Woppsy” and +“beddy-bed.” She has even learned, after much +effort, to convert her earlier “keam of feet” into +the more legitimate and mature “cream of wheat.” +And now that she has a better mastery of the sibilants +the charm has rather gone out of the claim, +which I so laboriously taught her, that “Daddy is +all feet,” meaning, of course, that he was altogether +sweet—which he gave small sign of being when he +first caught the point of my patient schooling. She +is not so quick-tongued as her brother Dinkie, but +she has a natural fastidiousness which makes her +long for alignment with the proprieties. She is, in +fact, a conformist, a sedate and dignified little lady +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span> +who will never be greatly given to the spilling of +beans and the upsetting of apple-carts. She is, in +many ways, amazingly like her pater. She will, I +know, be a nice girl when she grows up, without very +much of that irresponsibility which seems to have +been the bugbear of her maternal parent. I’m even +beginning to believe there’s something in the old tradition +about ancestral traits so often skipping a +generation. At any rate, that crazy-hearted old +Irish grandmother of mine passed on to me a muckle +o’ her wildness, the mad County Clare girl who +swore at the vicar and rode to hounds and could +take a seven-barred gate without turning a hair and +was apt to be always in love or in debt or in hot +water. She died too young to be tamed, I’m told, for +say what you will, life tames us all in the end. Even +Lady Hamilton took to wearing red-flannel petticoats +before she died, and Buffalo Bill faded down +into plain Mr. William Cody, and the abducted Helen +of Troy gave many a day up to her needlework, we +are told, and doubtlessly had trouble with both her +teeth and her waist measurement.</p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk is proud of his Poppsy and has announced +that it’s about time we tucked the “Poppsy” +away with her baby-clothes and resorted to the use +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73' name='page_73'></a>73</span> +of the proper and official “Pauline Augusta.” So +Pauline we shall try to have it, after this. There are +several things, I think, which draw Dinky-Dunk and +his Poppsy—I mean his Pauline—together. One is +her likeness to himself. Another is her tractability, +though I hate to hitch so big a word on to so small +a lady. And still another is the fact that she is a +girl. There’s a subliminal play of sex-attraction +about it, I suppose, just as there probably is between +Dinkie and me. And there’s something very +admirable in Pauline Augusta’s staid adoration of +her dad. She plays up to him, I can see, without +quite knowing she’s doing it. She’s hungry for his +approval, and happiest, always, in his presence. +Then, too, she makes him forget, for the time at +least, his disappointment in a soul-mate who hasn’t +quite measured up to expectations! And I devoutly +thank the Master of Life and Love that my solemn +old Dinky-Dunk can thus care for his one and only +daughter. It softens him, and keeps the sordid +worries of the moment from vitrifying his heart. It +puts a rainbow in his sky of every-day work, and +gives him something to plan and plot and live for. +And he needs it. We all do. It’s our human and +natural hunger for companionship. And as he observed +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span> +not long ago, if that hunger can’t be satisfied +at home, we wander off and snatch what we can +on the wing. Some day when they’re rich, I overheard +Dinky-Dunk announcing the other night, +Pauline Augusta and her Dad are going to make +the Grand Tour of Europe. And there, undoubtedly, +do their best to pick up a Prince of the Royal +Blood and have a château in Lombardy and a villa +on the Riviera and a standing invitation to all the +Embassy Balls!</p> +<p>Well, not if I know it. None of that penny-a-liner +moonshine for my daughter. And as she grows +older, I feel sure, I’ll have more influence over her. +She’ll begin to realize that the battle of life hasn’t +scarred up for nothing this wary-eyed old mater +who’s beginning to know a hawk from a henshaw. +I’ve learned a thing or two in my day, and one or +two of them are going to be passed on to my offspring.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span> +<a name='THURSDAY_THE_FIFTEENTH' id='THURSDAY_THE_FIFTEENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Thursday the Fifteenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Struthers and I have been house-cleaning, for +this is the middle of May, and our reluctant old +northern spring seems to be here for good. It has +been backward, this year, but the last of the mud +has gone, and I hope to have my first setting of +chicks out in a couple of days. Dinkie wants to +start riding Buntie to school, but his pater says +otherwise. Gershom goes off every morning, with +Calamity Kate hitched to the old buckboard, with +my two kiddies packed in next to him and provender +enough for himself and the kiddies and Calamity +Kate under the seat. The house seems very empty +when they are away. But some time about five, +every afternoon, I see them loping back along the +trail. Then comes the welcoming bark of old Bobs, +and a raid on the cooky-jar, and traces of bread-and-jelly +on two hungry little faces, and the familiar +old tumult about the reanimated rooms of Casa +Grande. Then Poppsy—I beg her ladyship’s pardon, +for I mean, of course, Pauline Augusta—has +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span> +to duly inspect her dolls to assure herself that they +are both well-behaved and spotless as to apparel, +for Pauline Augusta is a stickler as to decorum and +cleanliness; and Dinkie falls to working on his air-ship, +which he is this time making quite independent +of Whinnie, whose last creation along that line betrayed +a disheartening disability for flight. But +even this second effort, I’m afraid, is doomed to +failure, for more than once I’ve seen Dinkie back +away and stand regarding his incompetent flier with +a look of frustration on his face. He is always +working over machinery—for he loves anything with +wheels—and I’m pretty well persuaded that the +twentieth-century mania of us grown-ups for picking +ourselves to pieces is nothing more than a development +of this childish hunger to get the cover off +things and see the works go round. Dinkie makes +wagons and carts and water-wheels, but some common +fatality of incompetence overtakes them all and +they are cast aside for enterprises more novel and +more promising. He announces, now, that he intends +to be an engineer. And that recalls the time when +I was convinced in my own soul that he was destined +for a life of art, since he was forever asking me to +draw him “a li’l’ man,” and later on fell to drawing +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span> +them himself. He would do his best to inscribe a +circle and then emboss it with perfectly upright hair, +as though the person in question had just been perusing +the most stirring of penny-dreadfuls. Then +he would put in two dots of eyes, and one abbreviated +and vertical line for the nose, and another elongated +and horizontal line for the mouth, and arms with +extended and extremely elocutionary fingers, to say +nothing of extremely attenuated legs which invariably +toed-out, to make more discernible the silhouette +of the ponderously booted feet. I have several +dozen of these “li’l’ men” carefully treasured in +an old cigar-box. But he soon lost interest in these +purely anthropocentric creations and broadened out +into the delineation of boats and cars and wheel-barrows +and rocking-chairs and tea-pots, lying along +the floor on his stomach for an hour at a time, his +tongue moving sympathetically with every movement +of his pencil. He held the latter clutched close to the +point by his stubby little fingers.</p> +<p>I had to call a halt on all such artistry, however, +for he startled me, one day, by suddenly going crosseyed. +It came, of course, from working with his +nose too close to the paper. I imagined, with a sinking +heart, that it was an affliction which was to stay +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span> +with him for the rest of his natural life. But a +night’s sleep did much to restore the over-taxed eye-muscles +and before the end of a week they had entirely +righted themselves.</p> +<p>To-morrow Dinkie will probably want to be an +aeronaut, and the next day a cowboy, and the next +an Indian scout, for I notice that his enthusiasms +promptly conform to the stimuli with which he +chances to be confronted. Last Sunday he asked +me to read Macaulay’s <i>Horatius</i> to him. I could +see, after doing so, that it was going to his head +exactly as a second Clover-Club cocktail goes to the +head of a sub-deb. On Tuesday, when I went out +about sun-down to get him to help me gather the +eggs, I found that he had made a sword by nailing +a bit of stick across a slat from the hen-house, and +also observed that he had possessed himself of my +boiler-top. So I held back, slightly puzzled. But +later on, hearing much shouting and clouting and +banging of tin, I quietly investigated and found +Dinkie in the corral-gate, holding it against all +comers. So earnest was he about it, so rapt was he +in that solemn business of warfare, that I decided +to slip away without letting him see me. He was +sixteen long centuries away from Casa Grande, at +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span> +that moment. He was afar off on the banks of the +Tiber, defending the Imperial City against Lars +Porsena and his footmen. All Rome was at his back, +cheering him on, and every time his hen-coop slat +thumped that shredded old poplar gate-post some +proud son of Tuscany bit the dust.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_TWENTYFIFTH' id='SUNDAY_THE_TWENTYFIFTH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Twenty-Fifth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Duncan, it’s plain to see, is still in the doldrums. +He is uncommunicative and moody and goes about +his work with a listlessness which is more and more +disturbing to me. He surprised his wife the other +day by addressing her as “Lady Selkirk,” for the +simple reason, he later explained, that I propose to +be monarch of all I survey, with none to dispute my +domain. And a little later he further intimated that +I was like a miser with a pot of gold, satisfied to +live anywhere so long as my precious family-life +could go clinking through my fingers.</p> +<p>That was last Sunday—a perfect prairie day—when +I sat out on the end of the wagon-box, watching +Poppsy and Dinkie. I sat in the warm sunlight, +in a sort of trance, staring at those two children as +they went about their solemn business of play. They +impressed me as two husky and happy-bodied little +beings and I remembered that whatever prairie-life +had cost me, it had not cost me the health of my +family. My two bairns had been free of those illnesses +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span> +and infections which come to the city child, +and I was glad enough to remember it. But I was +unconscious of Dinky-Dunk’s cynic eye on me as I +sat there brooding over my chicks. When he spoke +to me, in fact, I was thinking how odd it was that +Josie Langdon, on the very day before her marriage, +should have carried me down to the lower end of +Fifth Avenue and led me into the schoolroom of the +Church of the Ascension, and asked me to study +Sorolla’s <i>Triste Herencia</i> which hangs there.</p> +<p>I can still see that wonderful canvas where the foreshore +of Valencia, usually so vivacious with running +figures and the brightest of sunlight on dancing sails, +had been made the wine-dark sea of the pagan questioner +with the weight of immemorial human woe to +shadow it. Josie had been asking me about marriage +and children, for even she was knowing her more +solemn moments in the midst of all that feverishly +organized merriment. But I was surprised, when she +slipped a hand through my arm, to see a tear run +down her nose. So I looked up again at Sorolla’s +picture of the naked little cripples snatching at their +moment’s joy along the water’s edge, at his huddled +group of maimed and cast-off orphans trying to be +happy without quite knowing how. I can still see the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span> +stunted little bodies, naked in sunlight that seemed +revealing without being invigorating, clustered about +the guardian figure of the tall old priest in black, +the somberly benignant old figure that towered above +the little wrecks on crutches and faced, as majestic +as Millet’s <i>Sower</i>, as austere and unmoved as Fate +itself, a dark sea overhung by a dark sky. Sorolla +was great in that picture, to my way of thinking. +He was great in the manner in which he attunes +nature to a human mood, in which he gives you the +sunlight muffled, in some way, like the sunlight during +a partial eclipse, and keys turbulence down to +quietude, like the soft pedal that falls on a noisy +street when a hearse goes by.</p> +<p>Josie felt it, and I felt it, that wordless thinning +down of radiance, that mysterious holding back of +warmth, until it seemed to strike a chill into the +bones. It was the darker wing of Destiny hovering +over man’s head, deepening at the same time that it +shadows the receding sky-line, so that even the +memory of it, a thousand miles away, could drain +the jocund blitheness out of the open prairie and +give an air of pathos and solitude to my own children +playing about my feet. Sorolla, I remembered, +had little ones of his own. He <i>knew</i>. Life had +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span> +taught him, and in teaching, had enriched his art. +For the artist, after all, is the man who cuts up +the loaf of his own heart, and butters it with beauty, +and at tuppence a slice hands it to the hungry children +of the world.</p> +<p>So when Dinky-Dunk laughed at me, for going +into a trance over my own children, I merely smiled +condoningly back at him. I felt vaguely sorry for +him. He wasn’t getting out of them what I was +getting. He was being cheated, in some way, out +of the very harvest for which he had sowed and +waited. And if he had come to me, in that mood +of relapse, if he had come to me with the slightest +trace of humility, with the slightest touch of entreaty, +on his face, I’d have hugged his salt-and-peppery +old head to my bosom and begged to start +all over again with a clean slate....</p> +<p>Gershom and I get along much better than I had +expected. There’s nothing wrong with the boy except +his ineradicable temptation to impart to you +his gratuitous tidbits of information. I can’t object, +of course, to Gershom having a college education: +what I object to is his trying to give me one. I +don’t mind his wisdom, but I do hate to see him tear +the whole tree of knowledge up by the roots and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span> +floor one with it. He has just informed me that +there are estimated to be 30,000,000,000,000 red +blood corpuscles in this body of mine, and I made +him blink by solemnly challenging him to prove it. +Quite frequently and quite sternly, too, he essays to +correct my English. He reproved me for saying: +“Go to it, Gershom!” And he declared I was in +error in saying “The goose hangs high,” as that +was merely a vulgar corruption for “The goose +whangs high,” the “whanging” being the call of the +wild geese high in the air when the weather is settled +and fair. We live and learn!</p> +<p>But I can’t help liking this pedagogic old Gershom +who takes himself and me and all the rest of +the world so seriously. I like him because he shares +in my love for Dinkie and stands beside Peter himself +in the fondly foolish belief that Dinkie has somewhere +the hidden germ of greatness in him. Not +that my boy is one of those precocious little bounders +who are so precious in the eyes of their parents and +so odious to the eyes of the rest of the world. He +is a large-boned boy, almost a rugged-looking boy, +and it is only I, knowing him as I do, who can fathom +the sensibilities housed in that husky young body. +There is a misty broodiness in his eyes which leaves +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span> +them indescribably lovely to me as I watch him in +his moments of raptness. But that look doesn’t last +long, for Dinkie can be rough in play and at times +rough in speech, and deep under the crust of character +I imagine I see traces of his Scottish father in +him. I watch with an eagle eye for any outcroppings +of that Caledonian-granite strain in his make-up. +I inspect him as Chinkie used to inspect his +fruit-trees for San José scale, for if there is any +promise of hardness or cruelty there I want it killed +in the bud.</p> +<p>But I don’t worry as I used to, on that score. He +may be rough-built, but moods cluster thick about +him, like butterflies on a shelf of broken rock. And +he is both pliable and responsive. I can shake him, +when in the humor, by the mere telling of a story. I +can control his color, I can excite him and exalt him, +and bring him to the verge of tears, if I care to, +by the mere tone of my voice as I read him one of +his favorite tales out of one of Peter’s books. But +I shrink, in a way, from toying with those feelings. +It seems brutal, cruel, merciless. For he is, after +all, a delicate instrument, to be treated with delicacy. +The soul of him must be kept packed away, +like a violin, in its case of reserve well-padded with +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span> +discretion. Two things I see in him: tenseness and +beauty. And these are things which are lost, with +rough handling. He shrinks away from brutality. +Always, when he came to the picture of Samson pulling +down the pillars of the temple, in Whinstane +Sandy’s big old illustrated Bible, he used to cover +with one small hand a certain child on the temple +steps as though to protect to the last that innocent +one from the falling columns and cornices.</p> +<p>But I’m worried, at times, about Dinky-Dunk’s +attitude toward the boy. There are ways in which +he demands too much from the child. His father is +often unnecessarily rough in his play with him, seeming +to take a morose delight in goading him to the +breaking point and then lamenting his lack of grit, +edging him on to the point of exasperation and then +heaping scorn on him for his weakness. More than +once I’ve seen his father actually hurt him, although +the child was too proud to admit it. Dinky-Dunk, +I think, really wants his boy to be a bigger figure in +the world than his dad. Milord’s a middle-aged man +now and knows his limitations. He has realized just +how high the supremest high-water mark of his life +will stand. And being human, he must nurse his human +regrets over his failures in life. So now he +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span> +wishes to see his thwarted powers come to fuller fruit +in his offspring. I’m afraid he’d even run the risk +of sacrificing the boy’s happiness for the sake of +knowing Dinkie’s wagon was to be hitched to the +star of success. For I know my husband well enough +to realize that he has always hankered after worldly +success, that his god, if he had any, has always been +the god of Power. I, too, want to see my son a +success. But I want him to be happy first. I want +to see him get some of the things I’ve been cheated +out of, that I’ve cheated myself out of. That’s the +only way now I can get even with life. I can’t live +my own days over again. But I can catch at the +trick of living them over again in my Dinkie.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span> +<a name='THURSDAY_THE_TWENTYNINTH' id='THURSDAY_THE_TWENTYNINTH'></a> +<h2><i>Thursday the Twenty-Ninth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>We have arrived at an armistice, Dinky-Dunk and +I. It was forced on us, for things couldn’t have +gone on in the old intolerable manner. Dinky-Dunk, +I fancy, began to realize that he hadn’t been quite +fair, and started making oblique but transparent +enough efforts at appeasement. When he sat down +close beside me, and I moved away, he said in a spirit +of exaggerated self-accusation: “I’m afraid I’ve got +a peach-stain on my reputation!” I retorted, at +that, that she had never impressed me as much of a +peach. Whereupon he merely laughed, as though it +were a joke out of a Midnight Revue. Then he +clipped a luridly illustrated advertisement of a nerve-medicine +out of his newspaper and pinned it on my +bedroom door, after I had ignored his tentative +knock thereon the night before. The picture showed +an anemic and woebegone couple haggling and shaking +their fists at each other, while a large caption +announced that “Thousands of Married Folks Lead +a Cat and Dog Life—Are Cross, Crabbed and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span> +Grumpy!”—all of which could be obviated if they +used Oxygated Iron.</p> +<p>What made it funny, of course, was the ridiculousness +of the drawing. Then Dinky-Dunk, right before +the blushing Gershom, accused me of being a +love-piker. I could sniff which way the wind was +blowing, but I sat tight. Then, to cap the climax, +my husband announced that he had something for +me which was surely going to melt my mean old +prairie heart. And late that afternoon he came +trundling up to Casa Grande with nothing more +nor less than an old prairie-schooner.</p> +<p>It startled me, when I first caught sight of it. But +its acquisition was not so miraculous as it might +have seemed. Dinky-Dunk, who is a born dickerer, +has been trading some of his ranch-stock for town-lots +on the outskirts of Buckhorn. On the back of +one of these lots stood a tumble-down wooden building, +and hidden away in this building was the prairie-schooner. +Something about it had caught his fancy, +so he had insisted that it be included in the deal. +And home he brought it, with Tithonus and Tumble-Weed +yoked to its antique tongue and his own Stetsoned +figure high on the driving seat. They had told +Dinky-Dunk it wasn’t a really-truly authentic prairie-schooner, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span> +since practically all of the trekking +north of the Fiftieth Parallel has been done by means +of the Red River cart. But Dinky-Dunk, after looking +more carefully over the heavy-timbered running-gear +and the cumbersome iron-work, and discovering +even the sturdy hooks under its belly from which the +pails and pots of earlier travelers must have hung, +concluded that it was one of the genuine old-timers, +one of the “Murphies” once driven by a “bull-whacker” +and drawn by “wheelers” and “pointers.” +Where it originally came from, Heaven only knows. +But it had been used, five years before, for a centenary +procession in the provincial capital and had +emerged into the open again last summer for a town-booming +<i>Rodeo</i> twenty miles down the steel from +Buckhorn. It looked like the dinosaur skeleton in +the Museum of Natural History, with every vestige +of its tarpaulin top gone. But Whinnie has already +sewed together a canvas covering for its weather-beaten +old roof-ribs, and has put clean wheat-straw +in its box-bottom, so that it makes a kingly place +for my two kiddies to play. I even spotted Dinkie, +enthroned high on the big driving-seat, with a +broken binder-whip in his hand, imagining he was +one of the original Forty-Niners pioneering along +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span> +the unknown frontiers of an unknown land. I could +see him duck at imaginary arrows and frenziedly +defend his family from imaginary Sioux with an +imaginary musket. And I stood beside it this morning, +dreaming of the adventures it must have lumbered +through, of the freight it must have carried +and the hopes it must have ferried as it once crawled +westward along the floor of the world, from water-hole +to lonely water-hole. I’ve been wondering +if certain perforations in its side-boards can be bullet-holes +and if certain dents and abrasions in its +timbers mean the hostile arrows of skulking Apaches +when women and children crouched low behind the +ramparts of this tiny wooden fortress. I can’t help +picturing what those women and children had to +endure, and how trivial, after all, are our puny hardships +compared with theirs.</p> +<p>And I don’t intend to dwell on those hardships. +I’m holding out the hand of compromise to my fellow-trekker. +Existence is only a prairie-schooner, +and we have to accommodate ourselves to it. And +I thank Heaven now that I can see things more clearly +and accept them more quietly. That’s a lesson Time +teaches us. And Father Time, after all, has to hand +us something to make up for so mercilessly permitting +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span> +us to grow old. It leaves us more tolerant. +We’re not allowed to demand more life, but we can +at least ask for more light. So I intend to be cool-headedly +rational about it all. I’m going to keep +Reason on her throne. I’m going to be a bitter-ender, +in at least one thing: I’m going to stick to +my Dinky-Dunk to the last ditch. I’m going to +patch up the old top and forget the old scars. For +we’re in the same schooner, and we must make the +most of it. And if I have to eat my pot of honey +on the grave of all our older hopes, I’m at least +going to dig away at that pot until its bottom is +scraped clean. I’m going to remain the neck-or-nothing +woman I once prided myself on being. I’m +even going to overlook Dinky-Dunk’s casual cruelty +in announcing, when I half-jokingly inquired why +he preferred other women to his own Better-Half, +that no horse eats hay after being turned out to +fresh grass. I’m going on, I repeat, no matter what +happens. I’m going on to the desperate end, like +my own Dinkie with the chocolate-cake when I warned +him he’d burst if he dared to eat another piece and +he responded: “Then pass the cake, Mummy—and +everybody stand back!”</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span> +<a name='TUESDAY_THE_FOURTH' id='TUESDAY_THE_FOURTH'></a> +<h2><i>Tuesday the Fourth</i></h2> +</div> +<p><i>Sursum corda</i> is the word—so here goes! I am +determined to be blithe and keep the salt of humor +sprinkled thick across the butter-crock of concession. +Dinky-Dunk watches me with a guarded and +wary eye and Pauline Augusta does not always approve +of me. Yesterday, when I got on Briquette +and made that fire-eater jump the two rain-barrels +put end to end Dinky-Dunk told me I was too old +to be taking a chance like that. So I promptly and +deliberately turned a somersault on the prairie-sod, +just to show him I wasn’t the old lady he was trying +to make me out. Gershom, who’d just got back +with the children and was unhitching Calamity Kate, +retreated with his eyebrows up, toward the stable. +And on the youthful face of Pauline Augusta I saw +nothing but pained incredulity touched with reproof, +for Poppsy is not a believer in the indecorous. She +has herself staidly intimated that she’d prefer the +rest of the family to address her as “Pauline Augusta” +instead of “Poppsy” which still so unwittingly +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span> +creeps into our talk. So hereafter we must +be more careful. For Pauline Augusta can already +sew a fine seam and array her seven dolls with a +preciseness and neatness which is to be highly commended.</p> +<p>On Saturday, when we motored into Buckhorn for +supplies, I escorted Pauline Augusta to Hunk +Granby, the town barber, to have her hair cut Dutch. +Her lip quivered and she gave every indication of +an outbreak, for she was mortally afraid of that +strange man and his still stranger clipping-machine. +But I spotted a concert-guitar on a bench at the +back of Hunk’s emporium and as it was the noon-hour +and there was no audience, I rendered a jazz +<i>obbligato</i> to the snip of the scissors.</p> +<p>“Say, Birdie, you’ll sure have me buck and wing +dancin’ if you keep that up!” remarked the man of +the shears. I merely smiled and gave him <i>Texas +Tommy</i>, <i>cum gusto</i>, whereupon he acknowledged he +was having difficulty in making his feet behave. We +became quite a companionable little family, in fact, +as the bobbing process went on, and when Dinky-Dunk +called for us as he’d promised he was patently +scandalized to find his superannuated old soul-mate +sight-reading <i>When Katy Couldn’t Katy Wouldn’t</i>—it +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span> +was a new one to me—in the second ragged +plush shaving-chair of a none too clean barber-shop +festooned with lithographs which would have made +old Anthony Comstock turn in his grave. But you +have to be feathered to the toes like a ptarmigan in +this northern country so that rough ways and rough +winds can’t strike a chill into you. The barber, in +fact, refused to take any money for Dutching my +small daughter’s hair, proclaiming that the music was +more than worth it. But my husband, with a dangerous +light in his eye, insisted on leaving four bits +on the edge of the shelf loaded down with bottled +beautifiers, and escorted us out to the muddy old +devil-wagon where Dinkie sat awaiting us.</p> +<p>“Dinky-Dunk,” I said with a perfectly straight +face as we climbed in, “what is it gives me such a +mysterious influence over men?”</p> +<p>Instead of answering me, he merely ground his +gears as though they had been his own teeth. So I +repeated my question.</p> +<p>“Why don’t you ask that school-teacher of +yours?” he demanded.</p> +<p>“But what,” I inquired, “has Gershom got to do +with it?”</p> +<p>He turned and inspected me with such a pointed +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span> +stare that we nearly ran into a Bain wagon full of +bagged grain.</p> +<p>“You don’t suppose I can’t see that that beanpole’s +fallen in love with you?” he rudely and raucously +challenged.</p> +<p>“Why, I feel exactly like a mother to that poor +boy,” I innocently protested.</p> +<p>“Mother nothing!” snorted my lord and master. +“Any fool could see he’s going mushy on you!”</p> +<p>I pretended to be less surprised than I really was, +but it gave me considerable to think over. My husband +was wrong, in a way, but no woman feels bad +at the thought that somebody is fond of her. It’s +nice to know there’s a heart or two at which one can +still warm one’s outstretched hands. The short-cut +to ruin, with a man, is the knowledge that women +are fond of him. But let a woman know that she is +not unloved and she walks the streets of Heaven, to +say nothing of nearly breaking her neck to make +herself worthy of those transporting affections.</p> +<p>But I soon had other things to think of, that +afternoon, for Dinkie and I had a little secret shopping +to do. And in the midst of it I caught the +familiar tawny look which occasionally comes into +my man-child’s eyes. It’s the look of dreaming, the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span> +look of brooding wildness where some unknown Celtic +great-great-grandfather of a great-great-grandfather +stirs in his moorland grave like a collie-dog +in his afternoon sleep. And it all arose out of nothing +more than a blind beggar sitting on an upturned +nail-keg at the edge of the sidewalk and rather miraculously +playing a mouth-organ and a guitar at +one and the same time. The guitar was a dog-eared +old instrument that had most decidedly seen better +days, stained and bruised and greasy-looking along +the shank. The mouth-organ was held in position +by two wires that went about the beggar’s neck, to +leave his hands free for strumming on the larger instrument. +The music he made was simple enough, +rudimentary old waltz-tunes and plaintive old airs +that I hadn’t heard for years. But I could see it +go straight to the head of my boy. His intent young +face took on the fierce emptiness of a Barres lion +overlooking some time-worn desert. He forgot me, +and he forgot the shopping that had kept him awake +about half the night, and he forgot Buckhorn and +the fact that he was a small boy on the streets of a +bald little prairie town. He was thousands of years +and thousands of miles away from me. He was a +king’s son in Babylon, commanding the court-musicians +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span> +to make sweet discourse for him. He was Saul +harkening to David. He was a dreamy-eyed Pict +listening to music wafted at dusk from a Roman +camp about which helmeted sentries paced. He was +a medieval prince, falsely imprisoned, leaning from +dark and lonely towers to catch the strains of some +wandering troubadour from his native Southlands. +He was a Magyar chieftain listening to the mountain-side +music of valleyed goat-herders with a touch +of madness to it. It engulfed him and entranced +him and awoke ancestral tom-toms in his blood. And +I waited beside him until the afternoon sunlight grew +thinner and paler and my legs grew tired, for I knew +that his hungry little soul was being fed. His eye +met mine, when it was all over, but he had nothing +to say. I could see, however, that he had been +stirred to the depths,—and by a tin mouth-organ +and a greasy-sided guitar!</p> +<p>To-night I found Dinkie poring over the pictures +in my Knight edition of Shakespeare. He seemed +especially impressed, as I stopped and looked over +his shoulder, by a steel engraving of Gérôme’s <i>Death +of Cæsar</i>, where the murdered emperor lies stretched +out on the floor of the Forum, now all but empty, +with the last of the Senators crowding out through +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span> +the door. Two of the senatorial chairs are overturned, +and Cæsar’s throne lies face-down on the +dais steps. So Dinkie began asking questions about +a drama which he could not quite comprehend. But +they were as nothing to the questions he asked when +he turned to another of the Gérôme pictures, this +one being the familiar old <i>Cleopatra and Cæsar</i>. He +wanted to know why the lady hadn’t more clothes +on, and why the big black man was hiding down +behind her, and what Cæsar was writing a letter for, +and why he was looking at the lady the way he did. +So, glancing about to make sure that Dinky-Dunk +was within ear-shot, I did my best to explain the +situation to little Dinkie.</p> +<p>“Cæsar, my son, was a man who set out in the +world to be a great conqueror. But when he got +quite bald, as you may see by the picture, and had +reached middle age, he forgot about being a great +conqueror. He even forgot about being so comfortably +middle-aged and that it was not easy for +a man of his years to tumble gracefully into love, +for those romantic impulses, my son, are associated +more with irresponsible youth and are apt to be +called by rather an ugly name when they occur in +advanced years. But Cæsar fell in love with the lady +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100' name='page_100'></a>100</span> +you see in the picture, whose name was Cleopatra +and who was one of the greatest man-eaters that +ever came out of Egypt. She had a weakness for +big strong men, and although certain authorities +have claimed that she was a small and hairy person +with a very uncertain temper, she undoubtedly set a +very good table and made her gentlemen friends very +comfortable, for Cæsar stayed feasting and forgetting +himself for nearly a year with her. It must +have been very pleasant, for Cæsar loved power, and +intended to be one of the big men of his time. But +the lady also loved power, and was undoubtedly glad +to see that she could make Cæsar forget about going +home, though it was too bad that he forgot, for +always, even after he had lived to write about all the +great things he had done in the world, people remembered +more about his rather absurd infatuation for +the lady than about all the battles he had won and +all the prizes he had captured. And the lady, of +course––”</p> +<p>But I was interrupted at this point. And it was +by Dinky-Dunk.</p> +<p>“Oh, hell!” he said as he flung down his paper and +strode out into the other room. And those exits, I +remembered, were getting to be a bit of a habit with +my harried old Diddums.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_FIFTH' id='SUNDAY_THE_FIFTH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Fifth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>The Day of Rest seems to be the only day left to +me now for my writing. There are no idlers in the +neighborhood of Casa Grande. The days are becoming +incredibly long, but they still seem over-short +for all there is to do. The men are much too busy +on the land to give material thought to any +thing so womanish as a kitchen-garden. So I have +my own garden to see to. And sometimes I work +there until I’m almost ready to drop. On a couple +of nights, recently, when it came watering-time, +even these endless evenings had slipped into such +darkness that I could scarcely see the plants I was +so laboriously irrigating by hand. It wasn’t until +the water turned the soil black that the growing +green stood pallidly out against the mothering dark +earth.... But it is delightful work. I really love +it. And I love to see things growing. After the +bringing up of a family, the bringing up of a garden +surely comes next.</p> +<p>Yet too much work, I find, can make tempers a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span> +trifle short. I spoke rather sharply to Dinky-Dunk +yesterday regarding the folly of leaving firearms +about the house where children can reach them. And +he was equally snappy as he flung his ugly old Colt +in its ugly old holster up over the top corner of +our book-cabinet. So, to get even with him, when +Dinkie came in with some sort of wide-petaled field-flower +and asked if I didn’t want my fortune told, I +announced I rather fancied it was pretty well told +already.... Scotty, by the way, now follows +Dinkie to school and waits outside and comes loping +home with him again. And my two bairns have a +new and highly poetic occupation. It is that of +patiently garnering youthful potato-bugs and +squashing the accumulated harvest between two +bricks.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_TWELTH' id='SUNDAY_THE_TWELTH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Twelth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I have been examining Gershom with a more interested +eye. And when he changed color, under that +inspection, I apologized for making him blush. And +as that only added to his embarrassment, I artlessly +asked him what a blush really was. That, of course, +was throwing the rabbit straight back into the brier-patch, +as far as Gershom was concerned. For he +promptly and meticulously informed me that a blush +was a miniature epilepsy, a vasomotor impulse leading +to the dilation or constriction of the facial blood-vessels, +some psychologists even claiming the blush +to be a vestigial survival of the prehistoric flight-effort +of the heart, coming from the era of marriage +by capture, when to be openly admired meant imminent +danger.</p> +<p>“That isn’t a bit pretty,” I told Gershom. “It’s +as horrid as what my husband said about handshaking +originating in man’s desire to be dead sure +his gentleman friend didn’t have a knife up his sleeve, +for use before the greeting was over. It would have +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span> +been so much nicer, Gershom, if you could have told +me that the first blush was born on the same day as +the first kiss.”</p> +<p>“Kissing,” that youth solemnly informed me, “was +quite unknown to primitive man. It evolved, in +fact, out of the entirely self-protective practice of +smelling, to determine the health of a prospective +mate, though this in turn evolved into the ceremonial +habit of the rubbing together of noses, which +is still the form of affectionate salutation largely +prevalent among the natives of the South Sea Islands.”</p> +<p>“What a perfectly horrible origin for such a heavenly +pastime,” I just as solemnly announced to Gershom, +who studied me with a stern and guarded eye, +and having partaken of his eleventh flap-jack, escaped +to the stable and the matutinal task of harnessing +Calamity Kate.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_SECOND' id='SUNDAY_THE_SECOND'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Second</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Summer is here, in earnest, and the last few days +have been hot and windless. School is over, for the +next eight weeks, and I shall have my kiddies close +beside me. Gershom, after a ten-day trip down to +Minneapolis for books and clothes, is going to come +back to Casa Grande and help Dinky-Dunk on the +land, as long as the holidays last. He thinks it will +build him up a bit. He is also solemnly anxious to +study music. He feels it would round out his accomplishments, +which, he acknowledged, have threatened +to become overwhelmingly scientific. So I’m to +give Gershom music lessons in exchange for his tutoring +Dinkie. They will be rather awful, I’m afraid, +for Gershom has about as much music in his honest +old soul as Calamity Kate. I may not teach him +much. But all the time, I know, I will be learning +a great deal from Gershom. He informed me, last +night, that he had carefully computed that the Bible +mentioned nineteen different precious stones, one +hundred and four trees or plants, six metals, thirty-five +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span> +animals, thirty-nine birds, six fishes, twenty insects, +and eleven reptiles.</p> +<p>As I’ve already said, summer is here. But it +doesn’t seem to mean as much to me as it used to, +for my interests have been taken away from the land +and more and more walled up about my family. +Dinky-Dunk’s grain, however, has come along satisfactorily, +and there is every promise of a good crop. +Yet this entirely fails to elate my husband. Every +small mischance is a sort of music-cue nowadays to +start him singing about the monotony of prairie-life. +Ranching, he protests, isn’t the easy game it used to +be, now that cattle can’t be fattened on the open +range and now that wheat itself is so much lower in +price. One has to work for one’s money, and watch +every dollar. And my Diddums keeps railing about +the government doing so little for the farmer and +driving the men off the land into the cities. He has +fallen into the habit of protesting he can see nothing +much in life as a back-township hay-tosser and that +all the big chances are now in the big centers. I +had been hoping that this was a new form of spring-fever +which would eventually work its way out of his +system. But I can see now that the matter is something +more mental than physical. He hasn’t lost +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span> +his strength, but he has lost his driving power. He +is healthy enough, Heaven knows. Indeed, he impresses +me as being a bit too much that way, for he +has quite lost his old-time lean and hungry look and +betrays a tendency to take on a ventral contour unmistakably +aldermanic. He may be heavy, but he +is hard-muscled and brown as an old meerschaum. +There is a canker, however, somewhere about the core +of his heart. And I can see him more clearly than +I used to. He is a strong man, but he is a strong +man without earnestness. And being such, I vaguely +apprehend in him some splendid failure. For the +wings that soar to success in this world are plumed +with faith and feathered with conviction.</p> +<p>It did not surprise me this morning when Dinky-Dunk +announced that he felt a trifle stale and suggested +that the family take a holiday on Tuesday +and trek out to Dead-Horse Lake for the day. +We’re to hitch Tumble-Weed and Tithonus to the +old prairie-schooner—for we’ll be taking side-trails +where no car could venture—and pike off for a +whole blessed day of care-free picnicking. So to-morrow +Struthers and I will be solemnly busy in +the kitchen concocting suitable dishes to be taken +along in the old grub-box, and when that is over +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span> +we’ll patch together something in the form of bathing-suits, +for there’ll be a chance for a dip in the +slough-water, and our kiddies have arrived at an +age imposing fit and proper apparel on their sadly +pagan but chastened parents.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span> +<a name='WEDNESDAY_THE_FIFTH' id='WEDNESDAY_THE_FIFTH'></a> +<h2><i>Wednesday the Fifth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>We have had our day at Dead-Horse Lake, but +it wasn’t the happy event I had anticipated. Worldly +happiness, I begin to feel, usually dies a-borning: it +makes me think of wistaria-bloom, for invariably one +end is withering away before the other end is even +in flower. At any rate, we were off early, the weather +was perfect, and the sky was an inverted tureen of +lazulite blue. Dinkie drove the team part of the +way, his dad smoked beside him up on the big driving-seat, +and I raised my voice in song until Pauline +Augusta fell asleep and had to be bedded down in +the wagon-straw and covered with a blanket.</p> +<p>Dead-Horse Lake is really a slough, dolorously +named because a near-by rancher once lost eight +horses therein, the foolish animals wandering out on +ice that was too thin to hold them up.</p> +<p>We were hungry by the time we had hobbled out +our teams and gathered wood and made a fire. And +after dinner Dinky-Dunk fell asleep and the children +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span> +and I tried to weave a willow basket, which wasn’t +a success. Poppsy, in fact, cut her finger with her +pater’s pocket-knife and because of this physical disability +declined to don her bathing-suit when we +made ready for the water.</p> +<p>The slough-water was enticingly warm, under the +hot July sun, and we ventured in at the west end +where a firmer lip of sand and alkali gave us footing. +And I enjoyed the swim, although Dinky-Dunk +made fun of my improvised bathing-suit. It seemed +like old times, to bask lazily in the sun and float +about on my back with my fingers linked under my +head. My lord and master even acknowledged that +my figure wasn’t so bad as he had expected, in a lady +of my years. I splashed him for that, and he dove +for my ankles, and nearly drowned me before I could +get away.</p> +<p>It was all light-hearted enough, until Dinky-Dunk +happened to notice that Dinkie wasn’t enjoying the +water as an able-bodied youngster ought. The child, +in fact, was afraid of it—which was only natural, +remembering what a land-bird he had been all his +life. His father, apparently, decided to carry him +out and give him a swimming-lesson. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span></p> +<p>I was on shore by this time, trying to sun out my +sodden mop of hair, which I had fondly imagined +I could keep dry. I heard Dinkie’s cry as his father +captured him, and I called out to Dinky-Dunk, +through my combed out tresses, to have a heart.</p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk called back that the Indian way, after +all, was the only way to teach a youngster. I didn’t +give much thought to the matter until the two of +them were out in deeper water and I heard Dinkie’s +scream of stark terror. It came home to me then +that the Indian method in such things was to toss +the child into deep water and leave him there to +struggle for his life.</p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk, I suppose, hadn’t intended to do +quite that. But the boy was naturally terrified at +being carried out beyond his depth, and when I +looked up I could see his bony little body struggling +to free itself. That timidity, I take it, angered the +boy’s father. And he intended to cure it. He was +doing his best, in fact, to fling the clutching and +clawing little body away from him when I heard those +repeated short screams of horror and promptly took +a hand in the matter. Something snapped in my +skull, and I saw red. I hated my husband for what +he was doing. I hated him for the mere thought +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span> +that he could do it. And I hated him for calling +out that this was what people got by mollycoddling +their children.</p> +<p>But that didn’t stop me. I made for Dinky-Dunk +like a hundred-weight of wildcats. I went through +the water like a hell-diver, and without quite knowing +what I was doing I got hold of him and tried to +garrote him. I don’t remember what I said, but I +have a hazy idea it was not the most ladylike of language. +He stared at me, as I tore Dinkie away from +him, stared at me with a hard and slightly incredulous +eye. For I’m afraid I was ready to fight with +my teeth and nails, if need be, and I suppose my expression +wasn’t altogether angelic. We were both +shaking, at any rate, when we got back to dry land. +Dinky-Dunk stood staring at us, for a silent moment +or two, with a look of black disgust on his +wet face. I’m even afraid it was something more +than disgust. Then he strode away and proceeded +to dress on the other side of the prairie-schooner, +without so much as a second look at us. And then +he went off for the horses, absenting himself a quite +unnecessary length of time. But I took advantage +of that to have a talk with Dinkie.</p> +<p>“Dinkie,” I said, “you and I are going to walk +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span> +out into that water, and this time you’re not going +to be afraid!”</p> +<p>I could see his eye searching mine, although he did +not speak.</p> +<p>I put one hand on the wet tangle of his hair.</p> +<p>“Will you come?” I asked him.</p> +<p>He took a deep breath. Then he looked at the +slough-water. Then he looked back into my eyes.</p> +<p>“Yes,” he said, though I noticed his lips were not +so red as usual.</p> +<p>So side by side and hand in hand the two of us +walked out into Dead-Horse Lake. His eyes questioned +me, once, as the water came up about his armpits. +But he shut his teeth tight and made no effort +to draw back. I could see the involuntary spasms +of his chest as that terrifying flood closed in about +his little body, yet he was ready enough to show me +he wasn’t a coward. And when I saw that he had +met and faced his ordeal I turned him about and +led him quietly back to land. We were both prouder +and happier for what had just happened. We didn’t +even need to talk about it, for each knew that the +other understood. What still disturbs me, though, +is something not in my boy’s make-up, but in my own. +During the long and silent drive home I noticed a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span> +mark on my husband’s neck. And I was the termagant +who must have put it there, though I have no +memory of doing so. But from it I realize that I +haven’t the control over myself every civilized and +self-respecting woman should have. I begin to see +that I can’t altogether trust myself where my female-of-the-species +affections are involved. I’m no better, +I’m afraid, than the Bengal tigress which Dinky-Dunk +once intimated I was, the Bengal tigress who +will battle so unreasoningly for her offspring. It +may be natural in mothers, whether they wear fur or +feathers or lisle-thread stockings—but it worries me. +I was an engine running wild. And when you run +wild you are apt to run into catastrophe.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span> +<a name='FRIDAY_THE_SEVENTH' id='FRIDAY_THE_SEVENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Friday the Seventh</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Dinky-Dunk is on his dignity. He has put a +fence around himself to keep me at a distance, the +same as he puts a fence around his haystacks to +keep off the cattle. We are coolly polite to each +other, but that is as far as it goes. There is something +radically wrong with this home, as a home, but +I seem helpless to put the matter right. It’s about +all I have left, in this life of mine, but I’m in some +way failing in my duty as a house-wife. “Home” +is a beautiful word, and home-life should be beautiful. +Any sacrifice and any concession a woman is +willing to make to keep that home, and to keep ugliness +out of it, ought to be well considered by the +judge of her final destinies. I’m ready to do my +part, but I don’t know where to begin. I’m depressed +by a teasing sense of frustration, not quite tangible +enough to fight, like cobwebs across your face. It’s +not easy to carry around the milk of human kindness +after they’ve pretty well kicked the bottom out of +your can! +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span></p> +<p>Torrid and tiring are these almost endless summer +days. But it’s what the grain needs, and who am +I to look this gift-horse of heat in the face. Yet +there are two things, I must confess, in which the +prairie is sadly lacking. One is trees; and the other +is shade, the cool green sun-filtering shade of woodlands +where birds can sing and mossy little brooks +can babble. I’ve been longing all day for just an +hour up in an English cherry tree, with the pectoral +smell of the leaves against my face and the chance +of eating at least half my own weight of fresh fruit. +But even in the matter of its treelessness, I’m told, +the prairie is reforming. There are men living who +remember when there were no trees west of Brandon, +except in the coulées and the river-bottoms. Now +that fire no longer runs wild, however, the trees are +creeping in, mile by mile and season by season. Already +the eastern line of natural bush country +reaches to about ten miles from Regina two hundred +miles west. Oxbow and Estevan, Dinky-Dunk once +told me, had no trees whatever when first settled, +though much of that country now has a comfortable +array of bluffs. And forestry, of course, is giving +nature a friendly push along, in the matter. In the +meantime, we have to accommodate ourselves to the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span> +conditions that prevail, just as the birds of the air +must do. Here the haughty crow of the east is compelled +to nest in the low willows of the coulée and +raise its young within hand-reach of mother earth. +Like our women, it can enjoy very little privacy of +family life. The only thing that saves us and the +crows, I suppose, is that the men-folks of this country +are too preoccupied with their own ends to go +around bird-nesting. They are too busy to break +up homes, either in willow-tops or women’s hearts.... I +ought to be satisfied. But I’ve been dogged, +this last day or two, by a longing to be scudding +in a single-sticker off Orienta Point again or to +motor-cruise once more along the Sound in a smother +of spray.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span> +<a name='THURSDAY_THE_THIRTEENTH' id='THURSDAY_THE_THIRTEENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Thursday the Thirteenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Dinky-Dunk has been called to Calgary on business. +It sounds simple enough, in these Unpretentious +Annals of an Unloved Worm, but I can’t help +feeling that it marks a trivially significant divide in +the trend of things. It depresses me more than I +can explain. My depression, I imagine, comes mostly +from the manner in which Duncan went. He was +matter-of-fact enough about it all, but I can’t get +rid of the impression that he went with a feeling very +much like relief. His manner, at any rate, was not +one to invite cross-examination, and he insisted, to +the end, on regarding his departure as an every-day +incident in the life of a preoccupied rancher. So I +caught my cue from him, and was as quiet about it +all as he could have wished. But under the crust +was the volcano....</p> +<p>The trouble with the tragedies of real life is that +they are never clear-cut. It takes art to weave a +selvage about them or fit them into a frame. But +in reality they’re as ragged and nebulous as +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span> +wind-clouds. The days drag on into weeks, and the weeks +into months, and life on the surface seems to be running +on, the same as before. There’s the same superficial +play of all the superficial old forces, but in +the depths are dangers and uglinesses and sullen +bombs of emotional TNT we daren’t even touch!</p> +<p>Heigho! I nearly forgot my <i>sursum-corda</i> rôle. +And didn’t old Doctor Johnson say that peevishness +was the vice of narrow minds? So here’s where +we tighten up the belt a bit. But we humans, who +come into the world alone, and go out of it alone, +are always hungering for companionship which we +can’t quite find. Our souls are islands, with a coral-reef +of reserve built up about them. Last night, when +I was patching some of Gershom’s undies for him, +I wickedly worked an arrow-pierced heart, in red +yarn, on one leg of his B.V.D.’s. This morning, I +noticed, his eye evaded mine and there was marked +constraint in his manner. I even begin to detect unmistakable +signs of nervousness in him when we +happen to be alone together. And during his last +music lesson there was a <i>vibrata</i> of emotion in his +voice which made me think of an April frog in a +slough-end.</p> +<p>Even my little Dinkie, day before yesterday, asked +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span> +me if I’d mind not bathing him any more. He explained +that he thought he could manage very nicely +by himself now. It seemed trivial enough, and yet, +in a way, it was momentous. I am to be denied the +luxury of tubbing my own child. I, who always loved +even the smell of that earthy and soil-grubbing +young body, who could love it when it wasn’t any +too clean and could glory in its musky and animal-like +odors as well as the satin-shine of the light on +its well-soaped little ribs, must now stand aside before +the reservations of sex. It makes me feel that +I’ve reached still another divide on the continent of +motherhood.</p> +<p>This afternoon, when I wandered into the study, +I observed Dinkie stooping over a Chesterfield pillow +with his right hand upraised in a perplexingly dramatic +manner. He turned scarlet when he saw me +standing there watching him. But the question in +my eyes did not escape him.</p> +<p>“I was pr’tendin’ to be King Arthur when he +found out Guinevere was in love with Launcelot,” +he rather lamely explained as he walked away to the +window and stood staring out over the prairie. But +for the life of me I can’t understand what should +have turned his thoughts into that particular channel +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span> +of romance. Those are matters with which the +young and the innocent should have nothing to do. +They are matters, in fact, which it behooves even +the old and the wary to eschew.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_SIXTEENTH' id='SUNDAY_THE_SIXTEENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Sixteenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>It seems strange, in such golden summer weather, +that every man and woman and child on this sunbathed +footstool of God shouldn’t be sanely and +supremely happy.... My husband, I am glad to +say, is once more back in his home. And I have +been realizing, the last few days, that home is an +empty and foolish place without its man about. It’s +a ship without a captain, a clan without a chief. +Yet I found it both depressing and humbling to be +brought once more face to face with that particular +fact.</p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk, on the other hand, has come back +with both an odd sense of elation and an odd sense +of estrangement. He has taken on a vague something +which I find it impossible to define. He is +blither and at the same time he is more solemnly abstracted. +And he protests that his journey was a +success.</p> +<p>“I’m going to ride two horses, from now on,” he +announced to me this morning. “I’ve got my chance +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span> +and I’m going to grab it. I’ve swapped my Buckhorn +lots for some inside Calgary stuff and I’m +lumping everything that’s left of my Coast deal for +a third-interest in those Barcona coal-fields. There’s +a quarter of a million waiting there for the people +with money enough to swing it. And I’m going to +edge in while it’s still open.”</p> +<p>“But is it possible to ride two horses?” I asked, +waywardly depressed by all this new-found optimism.</p> +<p>“It’s <i>got</i> to be possible, until we find out which +horse is the better traveler,” announced Dinky-Dunk. +Then he added, without caring to meet my eye: “And +I can’t say I see much promise of action out of this +particular end of the team.”</p> +<p>I must have flamed red, at that speech, for I +thought at the moment he was referring to me. It +was only after I’d turned the thing over in my mind, +as I helped Struthers put together our new butter-worker, +that I saw he really referred to Casa +Grande. But my husband knows I will never part +with this ranch. He will never be so foolish as to +ask me to do that. Yet one thing is plain. His +heart is no longer here. He will stick to this prairie +farm of ours only for what he can get out of it.</p> +<p>Dinkie warmed the cockles of my heart by telling +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span> +me this afternoon when we were out salting the +horses that he never wanted to go away from Casa +Grande and his mummy. The child, I imagine, had +overheard some of this morning’s talk. He put his +arm around my knees and hugged me tight. And I +could see the tawny look come into his hazel eyes +speckled with brown. My Dinkie is a prairie child. +His soul is not a cramped little soul, but has depth +and wideness and undiscerned mysteries.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_THIRTIETH' id='SUNDAY_THE_THIRTIETH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Thirtieth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Two weeks have slipped by. Two weeks have +gone, and left no record of their going. But a +prairie home is a terribly busy one, at times, and +it’s idleness that leads to the ink-pot. I’m still trying +to make the best of a none too promising situation, +and I’ll thole through, as Whinstane Sandy +puts it. After breakfast this morning, in fact, when +Pauline Augusta was swept by one of those little +gales of lonesomeness to which children and women +are so mysteriously subjected, she climbed up into +my lap and I rocked her on my shoulder as I might +have rocked a baby. Dinky-Dunk wandered in and +inspected that performance with a slightly satiric +eye. So, resenting his expression, I promptly began +to sing:</p> +<table style='margin: auto' summary=''><tr><td> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'> +“Bye-bye, Baby Bunting,<br /> +Daddy’s gone a-hunting,<br /> +To gather up a pile of tin<br /> +To wrap the Baby Bunting in!”</p> +</td></tr></table> +<p>Dinky-Dunk, when the significance of this lilted +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span> +flippancy of mine had sunk home, regarded me with +a narrowed and none too friendly eye.</p> +<p>“Feeling a bit larkier than usual this morning, +aren’t you?” he inquired with what was merely a +pretense at carelessness.</p> +<p>It was merely a pretense, I know, because we’d +been over the old ground the night before, and the +excursion hadn’t added greatly to the happiness of +either of us. Duncan, in fact, had rather horrified +me by actually asking if I thought there was a +chance of his borrowing eleven thousand dollars from +Peter Ketley.</p> +<p>“We can’t all trade on that man’s generosity!” I +cried, without giving much thought to the manner +in which I was expressing myself.</p> +<p>“Oh, <i>that’s</i> the way you feel about it!” retorted +my husband. And I could see his face harden into +Scotch granite. I could also see the look of perplexity +in my small son’s eyes as he stood studying +his father.</p> +<p>“Is there anything abnormal in my feeling the +way I do?” I parried, resenting the beetling brow of +the Dour Man.</p> +<p>“Not if you regard him as your personal and +particular fairy god-father,” retorted my husband.</p> +<p>“I’ve no more reason for regarding him as that,” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span> +I said as calmly as I could, “than I have for regarding +him as a professional money-lender.”</p> +<p>Duncan must have seen from my face that it would +be dangerous to go much further. So he merely +shrugged a flippant shoulder.</p> +<p>“They tell me he’s got more money than he knows +what to do with,” he said with a heavy jocularity +which couldn’t quite rise.</p> +<p>“Then lightening his burdens is a form of charity +we can scarcely afford to indulge in,” I none too +graciously remarked. And I saw my husband’s face +harden again.</p> +<p>“Well, I’ve got to have ready money and I’ve got +to have it before the year’s out,” was his retort. He +told me, when the air had cleared a little, that he’d +have to open an office in Calgary as soon as harvesting +was over. There was already too much at stake +to take chances. Then he asked me if there were +any circumstances under which I’d be willing to sell +Casa Grande. And I told him, quite promptly and +quite definitely, that there was none.</p> +<p>“Then how about the old Harris Ranch?” he +finally inquired.</p> +<p>“But why should we sell that?” I asked. Alabama +Ranch, I knew, was in my name, and I had always +regarded it as a sort of nest-egg for the children. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span> +It was something put by for a rainy day, something +to fall back on, if ill-luck ever overtook us again.</p> +<p>“Because I can double and treble every dollar we +get out of it, inside of a year,” averred Dinky-Dunk.</p> +<p>“But how am I to know that?” I contended, hating +to seem hard and selfish and narrow in the teeth +of an ambitious man’s enterprise.</p> +<p>“You’d have to take my word for it,” retorted +my husband.</p> +<p>“But we’ve more than ourselves to consider,” I +contended, knowing he’d merely scoff at that harping +on the old string of the children.</p> +<p>“That’s why I intend to get out of this rut!” he +cried with unexpected bitterness. And a few minutes +later he made the suggestion that he’d deed Casa +Grande entirely over to me if I’d consent to the sale +of Alabama Ranch and give him a chance to swing +the bigger plans he intended to swing.</p> +<p>The suggestion rather took my breath away. My +rustic soul, I suppose, is stupidly averse to change. +But I realize that when you travel in double-harness +you can’t forever pull back on your team-mate. So +I’ve asked Dinky-Dunk to give me a few days to +think the thing over.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span> +<a name='WEDNESDAY_THE_SECOND' id='WEDNESDAY_THE_SECOND'></a> +<h2><i>Wednesday the Second</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Casa Grande has had an invasion of visitors. It +was precious old Percy and his Olga who blew in +on us, after being swallowed up by the Big Silence +for almost four long years. They came without +warning, which is the free and easy way of the westerner, +appearing in a mud-splattered and dust-covered +Ford that had carried them blithely over two +hundred and thirty miles of prairie trails. And with +them they brought a quartet of rampageous young +buckaroos who promptly turned our sedate homestead +into a rodeo.</p> +<p>Percy himself is browner and stouter and more +rubicund than I might have expected, with just a +sprinkling of gray under his lopsided Stetson to +announce that Time hasn’t been standing still for +any of us. But one would never have taken him for +an ex-lunger. And there is a wholesomeness about +the man, for all his quietness, which draws one to +him. Olga herself still again impressed me as a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span> +Zorn etching come to life, as a Norse myth in petticoats, +with the same old largeness of limb and the +same old suggestion of sky-line vastnesses about her. +She still looks as though the Lord had made her +when the world was young and the women of Homer +did their spinning in the sunlight. Some earlier +touch of morning freshness is gone from her, it’s +true, for you can’t move about with four little toddlers +in your wake and still suggest the budding +vine. But that morning freshness has been supplanted +by a full and mellow noonday contentedness +which is not without its placid appeal. To her husband, +at any rate, she seems mysteriously perfect. +He can still sit and stare at her with a startlingly +uxorious eye. And she, in turn, bathes him in that +pale lunar stare of meditative approval which says +plainer than words just how much her “man” means +to her.</p> +<p>Percy and his family stayed overnight with us +and hit the trail again yesterday morning. An old +friend of Percy’s from Brasenose has taken a parish +some forty odd miles south of Buckhorn—a parish, +by the way, which ought to shake a little of the +Oxford dreaminess out of his system—and Olga and +her husband are “packing” their newly-arrived Toddler +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span> +Number Four down to the new curate to have +him christened.</p> +<p>We were all a bit shy and constrained, during our +first hour together but this soon wore away. It +wasn’t long before Olga’s offspring and mine were +fraternizing together, over-running the bathroom +tub and emptying our water-tank, and making a +concerted attack on one of Dinky-Dunk’s self-binders, +which would have been dismantled in short order, +if Percy hadn’t gone out to investigate the cause of +the sudden quiet.</p> +<p>“My boy loves everything with wheels,” explained +the proud Olga, in extenuation of her Junior’s oil-blackened +fingers.</p> +<p>That brought me up short, for I was on the point +of making the same statement about my Dinkie. +After thinking it over, in fact, I realized that <i>every</i> +normal boy loves everything with wheels. And it +began to dawn on me that there was nothing so extraordinary, +after all, in my son’s fondness for +machinery. I began to see that he was merely one +of a very wide-spread clan, when, an hour later, +the entire excited six united in playing Indian about +the haystacks, and kept it up until even the docile +Pauline Augusta was driven to revolt against so +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span> +persistently being the Pale-face captive. She announced +that she was tired of being scalped. So, +for variety’s sake, the boys turned to riding and +roping and hog-tying one another like the true little +westerners they were, and many an imaginary brand +was planted on many a bleating set of ribs.</p> +<p>But now they are gone, and I’ve been thinking a +great deal about Olga. I fancy I have even been +envying her a little. She’s of that annealing softness +which can rivet and hold a family together. I’ve +even been trying to solace myself with the claim +that she’s a trifle ox-like in her make-up. But that +is not being just to Olga. She makes a perfect +wife. She is as tranquil-minded as summer moonlight +on a convent-roof. She is as soft-spoken as a +wind-harp swinging in an abbey door. She surrenders +to the will of her husband and neither frets +nor questions nor walks with discontent. I suppose +she has a will of her own, packed somewhere away +in that benignant big body of hers, but she never +obtrudes it. She placidly awaits her time, as the +bosom of the prairie awaits its harvesting. And +I’ve been wondering if that really isn’t the best type +of woman for married life, the autumnally contented +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span> +and pensively quiet woman who can remain unruffled +by man and his meanderings.</p> +<p>I wasn’t built according to that plan, and I suppose +I’ve had to pay for it. I’ve just about concluded, +in fact, that I would have been a hard nut +for any man to crack. I’ve never been conspicuous +for my efforts at self-obliteration. I’ve a temper +that’s as brittle as a squirrel bone. I’m too febrile +and flightly, too chameleon-mooded and critical. +The modern wife should be always a conservative. +She should hold back her husband’s impulses of nervous +expenditure, conserving his tranquil-mindedness +about the same as cotton-waste in a journal-box conserves +oil. Heaven knows I started with theories +enough—but I must be a good deal like old Schramm, +that teacher of Heine’s who was so busy inditing +a study of Universal Peace that his boys had all the +chance they could wish for pummeling one another. +But I’ve been thinking, Reuben. And I’m going to +see if I can’t save what’s left of the ship. I’m no +Renaissance cherub on a cloudlet, but I’m going to +knuckle down and see if I can’t jibe along a little +better with my old Dinky-Dunk. I’ve decided to +back off and give him his chance. If he’s set on +selling Alabama Ranch, on the terms he’s mentioned, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span> +I’m not going to object. He’s determined to make +money, to advance. And I don’t want to see him +accusing me of lying down in the shafts!... What +is more, I’m going out in the fields, when the push +is on, to help stook the wheat. That may wear me +down and make me a little more like Olga.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span> +<a name='THURSDAY_THE_TENTH' id='THURSDAY_THE_TENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Thursday the Tenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>It’s difficult to be a woman, as the over-sensitive +Jean Christophe once remarked. Men are without +those confounding emotions which women seem to be +both cursed with and blessed with. When I announced +to Dinky-Dunk my willingness to part with +Alabama Ranch, he took it quite as a matter of +course. He betrayed no tendency to praise me for +my sacrifices, for my willingness to surrender to +strangers the land which had once been our home, +the acres on which we’d once been happy and heavy-hearted. +He merely remarked that under the circumstances +it seemed the most sensible thing to do. +There’s a one-horse lawyer in Buckhorn who has +been asking about the Harris Ranch and Dinky-Dunk +says he suspects this inquiring one has a client up +his sleeve.</p> +<p>What I had looked forward to as a talk which +might possibly beat down a few of the barriers of +reserve between us proved a bit of a disappointment. +My husband refused to accept me as a heroine. And +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span> +on his way out, as ill-luck would have it, he stopped +to observe Pauline Augusta struggling over a letter +to her “Uncle Peter.” It was a maiden effort along +that line and she was dictating her messages to +Dinkie, who, in turn, was laboriously and carefully +inscribing them on my writing-pad, with a nose and +a sympathetically working tongue not more than ten +inches away from the paper. Pauline Augusta, in +fact, had just proclaimed to her amanuensis that +“we had a geese for dinner to-day” when her father +stopped to size up the situation.</p> +<p>“To whom are you describing the home circle?” +questioned Pauline Augusta’s parent, with an intonation +that didn’t escape me.</p> +<p>“It’s a letter to Uncle Peter,” explained Dinkie’s +little sister. And I could see Duncan’s face harden.</p> +<p>“It’s funny my whole family should fall for that +damned Quaker!” were the words he flung over his +shoulder at me as he walked out of the room.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137' name='page_137'></a>137</span> +<a name='TUESDAY_THE_FIFTH' id='TUESDAY_THE_FIFTH'></a> +<h2><i>Tuesday the Fifth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>School has started again. And it’s a solemn +business, this matter of planting wisdom in little +prairie heads. Dinky-Dunk, who has been up to his +ears in haying and is now watching his grain with +a nervous eye, remarked that our offspring would +be once more mingling with Mennonites and Swedes +and Galicians and Ukrainians. I resented that +speech, though I said nothing in reply to it. But I +decided to investigate Gershom’s school.</p> +<p>So yesterday afternoon I drove over in the car. +I had a blow-out on the way, a blow-out which I had +to patch up with my own hands, so I arrived too late +to inspect Gershom conducting his classes. It was +almost four, in fact, before I got there, so I pulled +up beside the school-gate and sat waiting for the +children to come out. And as I sat there in the car-seat, +under a sky of unimaginable blue, with the +prairie wind whipping my face, I couldn’t help studying +that bald little temple of learning which stood +out so clear-cut in the sharp northern sunlight. It +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span> +was a plain little frame building set in one corner +of a rancher’s half-section, an acre of land marked +off by a wire fence where the two trails crossed, the +two long trails that melted away in the interminable +distance. It seemed a lonely little house of scholarship, +with its playground worn so bare that even +two months of idleness had given scant harborage +for the seeds that wind and bird must have brought +there. But as I stared at it it seemed to take on a +dignity all its own, the dignity of a fixed and far-off +purpose. It was the nest of a nation’s greatness. +It was the outpost of civilization. It was the advance-guard +of pioneering man, driving the wilderness +deeper and deeper into the North. It was life +preparing wistfully for the future.</p> +<p>From it I heard a sudden shrill chorus of voices +and the clatter of feet, and I knew that the day’s +work was over. I saw the children emerge, like bees +out of a beehive, and loneliness no longer reigned +over that bald yard in the betraying northern sunlight. +Yet they were not riotous, those children confronting +the wine-like air of the open. They were +more subdued than I had looked for, since I could +only too easily remember one of my earlier calls +for Dinkie at noon, when I found the entire class +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span> +turned out and riding a rancher’s pig, a heavy brood-sow +that had in some luckless moment wandered into +the school-yard and had been chased and raced until +it was too weary to resent a young barbarian mounting +its broad back and riding thereon, to the shouts +of the other boys and the shrill cries of the girls. +But now, from my car-seat, I could see Gershom +surrounded by a multi-colored group of little figures, +as he stopped to fix a strap-buckle on the school-bag +of one of his pupils. And as he stood there in the +slanting afternoon sunlight surrounded by his +charges he suddenly made me think of the tall old +priest in Sorolla’s <i>Triste Herencia</i> surrounded by his +waifs. I caught the echo of something benignant +and Lincoln-like from that raw-boned figure in the +big-lensed eye-glasses and the clothes that didn’t +quite fit him. And my respect for Gershom went +up like a Chinook-fanned thermometer. He took +those children of his seriously. He liked them. He +was trying to give them the best that was in him. +And that solemn purpose saved him, redeemed him, +ennobled his baldness just as it ennobled the baldness +of the four-square little frame building behind +him. I don’t know why it was, but for some reason +or other that picture of the northern prairie and the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span> +gaunt school-teacher surrounded by his pupils in the +thinning afternoon sunlight became memorable to me. +It photographed itself on my mind, not sharply, but +softened with a fringing prism of feeling, like a picture +taken with what camera-men call a “soft-focus.” +It touched my heart, in some way, and threatened +to bring a choke up into my foolish old throat.</p> +<p>It was Pauline Augusta who saw me first. She +came toward the car with her strapped school-books +and her lunch-box in her hand and a prim little +smile on her slightly freckled face. She impressed +me as a startingly shabby figure, in the old sealskin +coat which I had made over for her, worn clean +to the hide along the front, for even those early +autumn days found a chill in the air when the sun +began to get low. She had just climbed in beside +me when I caught sight of Dinkie. I saw him come +down the school-steps, stuffing something into the +pocket of his reefer-jacket as he came. He looked +startlingly tall, for a boy of his years. He seemed +deep in thought. There was, indeed, an air of remoteness +about him which for a moment rather +startled me, an air of belonging, not to me, but to +the world into which he was peering with such ardent +young eyes. Then he caught sight of me, and at +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span> +the same moment his face both lightened and brightened. +He came toward the car quietly, none the less, +and with that slightly sidewise twist of the body +which overtakes him in his occasional moments of +embarrassment, for it was plain that he stood +averse to any undue display of emotion before his +playmates. He merely said, “Hello, Mummy” and +smiled awkwardly. But after he had climbed up into +the car and wormed down between Pauline Augusta +and me, and after I had tucked the old bear-robe +about them and called out to Gershom that I’d carry +my kiddies home, I could feel Dinkie’s arm push shyly +in behind my back and work its way as far around +my waist as it was able to reach. He didn’t speak. +But his solemn little face gazed up at me, with its +habitual hungry look, and I could see the hazel specks +in the brown iris of the upturned eye as the arm +tightened its hold on me. It made me ridiculously +happy. For I knew that my boy loved me. And I +love him. I love him so much that it brings a tapering +spear-head of pain into my heart, and at the very +moment I’m so happy I feel a tear just under the +surface.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_TENTH' id='SUNDAY_THE_TENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Tenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I have been reading Peter’s latest letter to Dinkie, +reading it for the second time. It is not so frolicsome +as many of its fellows, but it impresses me as typical +of its sender.</p> +<p style='margin-left:1.0em; margin-right:1.0em; '>“I’ve to-day told fourteen cents’ worth of postage-stamps +to carry out to you, dear Dinkie, a copy of +my own <i>Tales from Homer</i>, which may be muddy +with a few big words but which the next year or two +will surely see tramped down into easier going. You +may not like it now, but later on, I know, you will +like it better. For it tells of heroes and battles and +travels which only a boy can really understand. It +tells of the wanderings and adventures of strong and +simple-hearted men, men who are as scarce, nowadays, +as the shining helmets they used to wear. It +tells of women superb and simple and lovely as goddesses, +such as your own prairie might give birth to, +such as your own mother must always seem to us. It +tells of flashing temples and cities of marble overlooking +singing seas of sapphire, of stately ships +venturing over dark waters and landing on unknown +islands, of siege and sword-fights and caves and +giants and sea-goddesses and magic songs, and all +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span> +that sunnier and simpler life which the world, as a +prosaic old grown-up, has left behind....</p> +<p style='margin-left:1.0em; margin-right:1.0em; '>“But I’m wrong in this, perhaps, for out in the +land where you live there is still largeness and the +gold-green ache of wonder beyond every sky-line. +And I can’t help envying you, Dinkie, for being a +part of that world which is so much more heroic than +mine. I live where a very shabby line of horse-cars +used to run; and you live where the buffaloes used +to run. I hear the rattle of the ash-cans in the morning; +and you hear the song of the wind playing on +the harp of summer. I pay five hundred dollars a +year to wander about a smoky club no bigger than +your corral; you wander about a Big Outdoors that +rambles off up to the Arctic Circle itself. And you +open a window at night and see the Aurora Borealis +in all its beauty; and I open mine and observe an +electric roof-sign announcing that Somebody’s Tonic +will take away my tired feeling. You put up your +blind and see God’s footstool bright with dew and +dizzy with distance; I put up mine and overlook a +wall of brick and mortar with one window wherein a +fat man shaves himself. And you can go out in the +morning and pick yellow crowfoot and range lilies; +and all we can pick about this place of ours are milk-bottles +and morning-papers packed full of murder +and theft and tax-notices!”</p> +<p>Much of that letter, I know, was over Dinkie’s +head. But it carried a message or two to Dinkie’s +mother which in some way threw her heart into high. +It was different from the letter that came the week +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span> +before, the one arriving two days ahead of Kingsley’s +<i>Water Babies</i> with six lines of Hagedorn inscribed on +its fly-leaf:</p> +<table style='margin: auto' summary=''><tr><td> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'> +“And here you are to live, and help us live.<br /> +Bend close and listen, bird with folded wings.<br /> +Here is life’s secret: Keep the upward glance;<br /> +Remember Aries is your relative,<br /> +The Moon’s your uncle, and those twinkling things<br /> +Your sisters and your cousins and your aunts!”</p> +</td></tr></table> +<p>This letter seemed like the Peter Ketley we knew +best, the sad-eyed Peter with the feather of courage +in his cap, the Peter who could caper and make you +forget that his heart had ever been heavy. For he +wrote:</p> +<p style='margin-left:1.0em; margin-right:1.0em; '>“This time, Dinkie-Boy, I’m going to tell you +about the sea. For the water-tank, as I remember it, +is the biggest sea you have at Casa Grande—unless +you count the mud when winter breaks up! And +your prairie, with its long waves of green, is, I suppose, +really a sea that has gone to sleep. But I mean +the truly honest-to-goodness sea which has tides and +baby-whales and steamers and cramps and sea-serpents +in it. You saw it once at Santa Monica, I +know, though you may have been too small to remember. +But yesterday, I motored to a place called +Atlantic City where they sell picture post-cards and +push you in a wheeled chair and let you sit on the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span> +sand and watch the Water Babies, whom the policemen +send to jail if they so much as walk along the +beach without their stockings on. These Water +Babies were not in a bottle—like the ones you’ll read +about in the book—but I think there was a bottle or +two in some of them, from the way they acted. But +one of them was in a pickle, for Father Neptune +caught her in his under-tow—which you must not +mix up with his under-toe, something with which only +the mermaids are familiar—and a life-guard had to +swim out and bring her in. And a few minutes after +that I saw a real beach-comber. I had read about +them in the South Sea Islands, but had never seen one +before. This one sat under a striped parasol, with a +mirror between her knees, and combed and combed +her hair until it was quite dry again. I was disappointed +in her knees, because I was hoping, at first, +she wouldn’t have any, but would be a mermaid who +had come up on the sand to sun herself and would +have a long and tapering tail covered with scales like +a tarpon’s. But all she had was beach-shoes tied +with silk ribbons, and I preferred watching the +water. For when I watch the ocean I always feel like +Mr. Hood and wish I was at least three small boys, so +that I could pull off my three pairs of shoes and +stockings and go paddling up to my six bare knees +and let the rollers slap against my three startled little +tummies and have thirty toes to step on the squids +and star-fish with. And when I went back to the +board-walk and watched all the gulls (I don’t think +I ever saw so many of ’em in one place at once) I +couldn’t help thinking it was too bad the Pilgrim +Fathers didn’t wait for three centuries and land at a +bright and lively place like this, since it would have +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span> +made them so much jollier and fizzier. They’d probably +have turned the <i>Mayflower</i> into a diving-float +and we’d never have had any Blue Laws to break and +that curious thing known as The New England Conscience +to keep us from being as happy as we feel we +ought to be.”</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_TWENTYFOURTH' id='SUNDAY_THE_TWENTYFOURTH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Twenty-Fourth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Harvest is on us, and Casa Grande hums like a +beehive. There are three extra “hands” to feed, and +Whinnie is going about with a moody eye because +Struthers is directing more attention than necessary +toward one of the smooth-spoken cutthroats now +nesting in our bunk-house. His name is Cuba Sebeck +and in times of peace he professes to be a horse-wrangler. +Struthers, intent on showing Whinnie +that he is not the only man in her world, is placidly +but patiently showering the lanky Cuba with a barrage +of her fluffiest pastries. She has also given her +hair an extra strong wash of sage-tea, which is +Struthers’ pet and particular way of putting on war-paint. +Whinnie, I notice, shuts himself up after +supper with that copy of Burns’ poems we gave him +last Christmas, morosely exiling himself from all the +laughing and gaming and pow-wowing which takes +place in the long cool twilights, just outside the bunk-house. +Cuba undertook to serenade the dour one by +donning certain portions of Struthers’ apparel and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span> +playing my old banjo under his window. Whinnie +quietly retaliated by emptying his bath-water on the +musician’s head—and the language was indescribable. +I have been forced to speak to Dinky-Dunk, in fact, +about the men’s profanity before my children. It is +something I will not endure. My husband, on the +other hand, refuses to take the matter very seriously. +But I have been keeping a close eye over my kiddies—and +woe betide the horse-wrangler who uses unseemly +language within their hearing. So far they seem to +have gone through it unscathed, about the same as +a child can go through the indecorous moments of +<i>The Arabian Nights</i>, which stands profoundly wicked +to only Arabs and old gentlemen.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span> +<a name='WEDNESDAY_THE_TWENTYEIGHTH' id='WEDNESDAY_THE_TWENTYEIGHTH'></a> +<h2><i>Wednesday the Twenty-Eighth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Summer is slipping away. The days are shortening +and there have been light frosts at night, but not +enough to hurt Dinky-Dunk’s late oats, which he has +been watching with a worried eye. There is a saber-blade +edge to the evening air now and we have been +having some glorious displays of Northern Lights. +I can’t help feeling that these Merry Dancers of the +Pole, as some one has called them, make up for what +the prairie may lack in diversity. Dusk by dusk they +drown our world in color, they smother our skies in +glory. They are terrifying, sometimes, to the tenderfoot, +giving him the feeling that his world is on fire. +Poor old Struthers, during an especially active display, +invariably gets out her Bible. Used to them as +I am, I find they can still touch me with awe. They +make me lonesome. They seem like the search-lights +of God, showing up my human littlenesses of soul. +They are Armadas of floating glory reminding me +there are seas I can never traverse. And the farther +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span> +north one goes, of course, the more magnificent the +displays.</p> +<p>Last night we watched the auroral bands gather +and grow in a cold green sky, straight to the north +of us, and then waver and deepen until they reached +the very zenith, where they hung, swaying curtains +of fire. No wonder the redskins call that wild +pageantry of color the ghost-dance of their gods. +Even as we watched them, opal and gold and rose and +orange and green, we could see them come wheeling +down on our little world like an army of angels with +incandescent swords. It made one imagine that the +very heavens were aflame, going up in quivering veils +of white and red and green. And when it was over I +listened to a long argument about the Aurora +Borealis, or the Aurora Polaris, as Gershom insisted +it should be called.</p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk contended that one could <i>hear</i> these +Northern Lights overhead, on a clear night. He +described the sound as sometimes a faint crackling, +like that of a comb drawn through your hair, and +sometimes as a soft rustling noise, like the rustling of +a silk petticoat heard through a closed door, coming +closer and closer as the display wavered farther and +farther toward the south. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span></p> +<p>Gershom was disposed to dispute this, so our old +Klondiker, Whinstane Sandy, was called in to give +evidence. He did so promptly and positively, saying +he’d heard the Lights many a night in the Far North. +Gershom is still unconvinced, but intends to look up +his authorities on the matter. He attributes them +to sun-spots and asserts it’s a well-known fact they +often put the telephone and telegraph wires out of +commission. He has proposed that we sit up and +study them some night, through his telescope, which +he is disinterring from the bottom of his trunk....</p> +<p>My lord and master is going about with a less +clouded eye, for he has succeeded in selling the Harris +Ranch, and selling it for thirty-five hundred dollars +more than he had expected. It is to go, eventually, +to some tenderfoot out of the East, to some tenderfoot +who can have very little definite knowledge of +land-values in this jumping-off place on the edge of +the world. But may that tenderfoot, whoever he is, +be happy in his new home! Dinky-Dunk is now forever +figuring up what he will get for his grain. He’s +preoccupied with his plans for branching out in the +business world. His heart is no longer in his work +here. I sometimes feel that we’re all merely accidents +in his life. And that feeling leaves me with a heart +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span> +so heavy that I have to keep busy, or I’d fall to +luxuriating in that self-pity which is good for neither +man nor beast.</p> +<p>Yet Dinky-Dunk is not all hardness. He surprises +me, now and then, by disturbing little +gestures of boyishness. He announced to me the +other night that the only way to get any use +out of a worn-out husband was to revamp him, +with the accent on the vamp. I understood what +he meant, and I think I actually changed color +a trifle. But I know of nothing more desolating +than trying to make love to a man either against his +will or against your own will. It would be a terrible +thing to have him tell you there was no longer any +kick in your kisses. So I remain on my dignity. I +am companionable, and nothing more. When we +were saying good-by, the last time he went off to the +city, and he looked up at my perfunctory and quite +meaningless peck on his cheek, I felt myself blushing +before his quiet and half-quizzical stare. Then he +laughed a little as he turned away and pulled on his +gauntlets. “The sweeter the champagne, I suppose, +the colder it should be served!” he rather cryptically +remarked as he climbed into the waiting car. And +yesterday he let his soul emerge from its tent of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span> +reticence when he climbed up on the wagon-box to +stare out over his sea of all but ripened wheat. +“Come, money!” he said, with his arms stretched out +before him. Now, that was a trick which he had +caught from my little Dinkie. I don’t know how or +where the boy first picked up the habit, but when he +particularly wants something he stands solemnly out +in the open, with his two little arms outstretched, as +though he were supplicating Heaven itself, and says +“Come, jack-knife!” or “Come, jelly-roll!” or “Come, +rain!” according to his particular desires of the particular +moment. I think he really caught it from +an illustration in <i>The Arabian Nights</i>, from the picture +of Cassim grandiloquently proclaiming “Open +Sesame!” He is an imaginative little beggar. +“Mummy,” he said to me the other night, “see all the +moonlight that’s been spilled on the grass!” But +children are made that way. Even my sage little +Poppsy, when a marigold-leaf fell in the bowl of our +solitary gold-fish, cried out to me: “See, Mummy, +our fish has had a baby!” Sex is still an enigma to +her, as much an enigma as it was away last spring +when, not being quite sure whether her new kitten +was a little boy-cat or a little girl-cat, she sagaciously +christened it “Willie-Alice.” And a few weeks +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span> +later, when the unmistakable appearance of tail-feathers +finally persuaded even her optimistic young +heart that the two chicks which had been bequeathed +to her were dishearteningly masculine in their tendencies, +she officially re-christened the apostate “Elaine” +and “Rowena,” and thereafter solemnly accepted +them as “Archie” and “Albert.” And while speaking +of this mysteriously ramifying factor of sex, I am +compelled to acknowledge that I encountered a rather +disturbing little back-flare of Freudian hell-fire only +a couple of evenings ago. It took my thoughts galloping +back to the time in our post-nuptial era when +Dinky-Dunk went Berserker and chased me around +the haystacks with my hair flying. I’d taken Dinkie +upon my lap, and, without quite knowing it, sat +stroking his frowsy young head. My thoughts, in +fact, were a thousand miles away. Then, still without +giving much attention to what I was doing, I squeezed +that warm little body up close against my own. I +was astounded, the next moment, to see my small +offspring turn on me with all the lusty fierceness of +the cave man. He got his arms about me and buried +his face in my neck and kissed me as no gentleman, +big or little, should ever kiss a lady. His small body +was shaken with a subliminal and quite unexpected +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span> +gust of feeling, just as I’ve seen a June-time garden +shaken by an unexpected gust of wind. It passed +away, of course, about as quickly as it came—but +with it went a scattering of the white petals of childhood +unconcern.</p> +<p>I don’t suppose my poor little Dinkie has yet +awakened to the fact that his body is a worn river-bed +down which must race the freshets of far-off racial +instincts. But the thing disturbed me more than I’d +be willing to admit. There are murky corridors in +the house of life. They stand there, and they must +be faced. There are rooms where the air must be +kept stirring, corners into which the clear sanity of +sunlight must be thrown. Dinkie, since he has +stepped into his first experience in the keeping of rabbits, +has been asking me a number of rather disconcerting +questions. His father, I notice, has the habit +of half-diffidently referring the boy to me, just as I +nursed the earlier habit of referring him to his father. +But some time soon Dinkie and I will have to have a +serious talk about this thing called Life, this Life +which is so much more uncompromisingly brutal than +the child-mind can conceive....</p> +<p>By the way, there’s a lot of nonsense talked about +motherhood softening women. It may soften them in +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span> +some ways, but there are many others in which it +hardens them. It draws their power of love together +into a fixed point, just as the lens of a burning-glass +concentrates the vague warmth of the sun into one +small and fiercely illuminated area. It is a form of +selfishness, I suppose, but it is a selfishness nature +imposes upon us. And it is sanctified by the end it +serves. At every turn, now, I find that I am thinking +of my children. I seem to have my eyes set steadily +on something far, far ahead. I’m not quite certain +just what this something is. It’s a sort of secret +between me and the Master of Life. But the memory +of it makes my days more endurable. It allows me to +face the future without a quaver of regret. I am a +woman, and I am no longer young. But it gives me +courage to laugh in the teeth of Time.</p> +<p>And to laugh, to laugh whatever happens—that is +the great thing! It isn’t age I dread. But I’d hate +to lose that lightness with which those blessed ones +we call the young can move through the world, that +self-renewing freshness which converts every daybreak +into a dewy new world and mints every sunrise +into a brand new life ... I asked Gershom to-day +if he could possibly tell me how many Parker House +rolls a square mile of wheat running forty bushels to +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span> +the acre would make. And he surprised me by inquiring +how many quarts of buttermilk it would take to +shingle a cow. Gershom is widening out a bit....</p> +<p>Dinkie, I notice, has just compiled a list of horses. +I read from his carefully ruled half-page:</p> +<p>“Draght horses; carriege horses; riding horses; +racing horses; ponyies; percheron from france; Belgain +from Beljium; shire clyesdale and saffold punch +from great Britain; french coach and German coach; +contucky saddle horses; through-breads; Shetland +ponies; mushstand ponies; pacers and pintoes.” +Thus recordeth my Toddler.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_NINTH' id='SUNDAY_THE_NINTH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Ninth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I have had Dinkie in bed for the last five days, +with a bruised foot. Duncan shortened the stirrups +and put the boy on Briquette, who had just proved a +handful for even an old horse-wrangler like Cuba +Sebeck. Briquette bucked and threw the boy. And +Dinkie, in the mix-up, got a hoof-pound on the ankle. +No bones were broken, luckily, but the foot was very +sore and swollen for a few days. No word about the +episode has passed between Duncan and me. But I’m +glad, all things considered, that I was not a witness +of the accident. The clouds are already quite heavy +enough over Casa Grande.</p> +<p>Dinkie and his mater, however, have been drawn +much closer together during the last few days. I’ve +talked to him, and read to him, and without either of +us being altogether conscious of it there has been an +opening of a closed door or two. Dinkie loves to be +read to. The new world of the imagination is just +opening up to him. And I envy the rapture of the +child in books, rapture not yet spoiled by the intellectual +conceit of the grown-up. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span></p> +<p>But I’m not the only reader about this ranch. I’m +afraid the copy of Burns which Santa Claus brought +to Whinstane Sandy last Christmas is not adding to +his matrimonial tendencies as love-plaints of that +nature should. At noon, as soon as dinner is over, +he sits on the back step, poring over his beloved +Tammas. And at night, now that the evenings are +chillier, he retreats to the bunk-house stove, where he +smokes and reads aloud. His own mother, he tells +me, used to say many of those pieces to him when +he was a wee laddie. He both outraged and angered +poor Struthers, last Sunday, by reading <i>Tam +O’Shanter</i> aloud to her. That autumnal vestal proclaimed +that it was anything but suitable literature +for an old philanderer who still saw fit to live alone. +It showed, she averred, a shocking lack of respect for +women-folk and should be taken over by the police.</p> +<p>Struthers even begins to suspect that this much-thumbed +volume of Burns lies at the root of Whinnie’s +accumulating misanthropy. She has asked me +if I thought a volume of Mrs. Hemans would be of +service in leading the deluded old misogynist back to +the light. The matter has become a more urgent one +since Cuba Sebeck suffered a severe bilious attack and +a consequent sea-change in his affections. But I’m +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span> +afraid our Whinnie is too old a bird to be trapped +by printer’s ink. I notice, in fact, that Struthers is +once more spending her evenings in knitting winter +socks. And I have a shadow of a suspicion that they +are for the obdurate one.</p> +<p>My Dinkie, by the way, has written his first poem, +or, rather, his first two poems. The first one he +slipped folded into my sewing-basket and I found it +when I was looking for new buttons for Pauline +Augusta’s red sweater. It reads:</p> +<table style='margin: auto' summary=''><tr><td> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'> +No more we smel the sweet clover,<br /> +Floting on the breeze all over.<br /> +But now we hear the wild geese calling;<br /> +And lissen, tis the grey owl yowling.</p> +</td></tr></table> +<p>The second one, however, was a more ambitious +effort. He worked over it, propped up in bed, for an +hour or two. Then, having looked upon his work +and having seen that it was good, he blushingly +passed it over to me. So I went to the window and +read it.</p> +<table style='margin: auto' summary=''><tr><td> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'> +<span style='margin-left: 0.78125em;'>O blue-bird, happy robbin—</span><br /> +Who teached those birds to stick theirselves together?<br /> +Who teached them how to put their tails on?<br /> +Who teached them how to hold tight on the tree tops?<br /> +Who gived them all the fetthers on their brest?<br /> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span> +Who gived them all the eggs with little birdies in them?<br /> +Who teached them how to make the shells so blue?<br /> +Who teached them how to com home in the dark?<br /> +Twas God. Twas God. He teached him!</p> +</td></tr></table> +<p>I read it over slowly, with a crazy fluttering of the +heart which I could never explain. They were so +trivial, those little halting lines, and yet so momentous +to me! It was life seeking expression, life groping +so mysteriously toward music. It was man +emerging out of the dusk of time. It was Rodin’s +<i>Penseur</i>, not in grim and stately bronze, but in a +soft-eyed and white-bodied child, groping his stumbling +way toward the border-land of consciousness, +staring out on a new world and finding it wonderful. +It was my Little Stumbler, my Precious Piece-of-Life, +walking with his arm first linked through the arm of +Mystery. It was my Dinkie looking over the rampart +of the home-nest and breaking lark-like into song.</p> +<p>I went back to the bed and sat down on the edge +of it, and took my man-child in my arms.</p> +<p>“It’s wonderful, Dinkie,” I said, trying to hide the +tears I was so ashamed of. “It’s so wonderful, my +boy, that I’m going to keep it with me, always, as +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span> +long as I live. And some day, when you are a great +man, and all the world is at your feet, I’m going to +bring it to you and show it to you. For I know now +that you are going to be a great man, and that your +old mother is going to live to be so proud of you it’ll +make her heart ache with joy!”</p> +<p>He hugged me close, in a little back-wash of rapture, +and then settled down on his pillows.</p> +<p>“I could do better ones than that,” he finally said, +with a glowing eye.</p> +<p>“Yes,” I agreed. “They’ll be better and better. +And that’ll make your old Mummsy prouder and +prouder!”</p> +<p>He lay silent for several minutes. Then he looked +at the square of paper which I held folded in my +hand.</p> +<p>“I’d like to send it to Uncle Peter,” he rather +startled me by saying.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span> +<a name='SATURDAY_THE_TWENTYNINTH' id='SATURDAY_THE_TWENTYNINTH'></a> +<h2><i>Saturday the Twenty-Ninth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Once more I’m a grass widow. My Duncan is +awa’. He scooted for Calgary as soon as his threshing-work +was finished up. But that tumult is over +and once more I’ve a chance to sit down and commune +with my soul. Everything here is over-running +with wheat. Our bins are bursting. The lord of the +realm is secretly delighted, but he has said little about +it. He has a narrow course to steer. He is grateful +for the money that this wheat will bring in to him, +yet he can see it would never do to harp too loudly +on the productiveness of our land—on <i>my</i> land, I +ought to say, for Casa Grande has now been formally +deeded to me. I find no sense of triumph, +however, in that transfer. I am depressed, in fact, +at the very thought of it. It seems to carry a vague +air of the valedictory. But I refuse to be intimidated +by the future.</p> +<p>Gershom and I, indeed, have been indulging in the +study of astronomy. The air was crystal clear last +night, so that solemn youth suggested that we take +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span> +out the old telescope and study the stars. Which we +did. And which was much more wonderful than I +had imagined. But Gershom had no reflector, so +after getting a neck-ache trying to inspect the +heavens while on our feet we took the old buffalo-robe +and a couple of rugs out to a straw-pile that had been +hauled in to protect our winter perennials. There +we indecorously reposed on our backs and went stargazing +in comfort. And Gershom even forgot that +painful bashfulness of his when he fell to talking +about the planets. He slipped out of his shell and +spoke with genuine feeling.</p> +<p>He suggested that we begin with the Big Dipper, +which I could locate easily enough well up in the +northern sky. That, Gershom told me, was sometimes +called the Great Bear, though it was only a +part of the real <i>Ursa Major</i> of the astronomers. +Then he showed me Benetnasch at the end of the +Dipper’s handle, and Mizar at the bend in the handle, +then Alioth, and then Megrez, which joins the handle +to the bowl. Then he showed me Phaed and Merak, +which mark the bottom of the bowl, and then Dubhe +at the bowl’s outer rim.</p> +<p>I tried hard, but I was very stupid about getting +the names right. Then Gershom asked me to look +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span> +up at Mizar, and see if I could make out a small star +quite close to it. I did so, without much trouble, and +Gershom thereupon condescended to admit that I had +exceptionally good eyes. For that star, he explained, +was Alcor, and Alcor was Arabic for “the proof,” +and for centuries and centuries the ability to see +that star had been accepted as the proof of good +vision.</p> +<p>Then Gershom went on to the other constellations, +and talked of suns of the first and second magnitude, +and pointed out Sirius, in whose honor great temples +had once been built in Egypt, and Arcturus, the same +old Arcturus that a Hebrew poet by the name of +Job had sung about, and Vega and Capella and +Rigel, which he said sent out eight thousand times +more light than our sun, and is at least thirty-four +thousand times as big.</p> +<p>But it only made me dizzy and staggered my mind. +I couldn’t comprehend the distances he was talking +about. I just couldn’t make it, any more than a +bronco that had been used to jumping a six-barred +gate could vault over a windmill tower. And I had +to tell Gershom that it didn’t do a bit of good informing +me that Sirius was comparatively close to us, as it +stood only nine light-years away. I remembered how +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span> +he had explained that light travels one hundred and +eighty-six thousand miles a second, and that there +are thirty million seconds in a year, so that a light-year +is about five and a half million million of miles. +But when he started to tell me that some of the so-called +photographic stars are thirty-two thousand +light-years away from us my imagination just curled +up and died. It didn’t mean anything to me. It +couldn’t. I tried in vain to project my puny little +soul through all that space. At first it was rather +bewildering. Then it grew into something touched +with grandeur. Then it took on an aspect of awfulness. +And from that it grew into a sort of ghastliness, +until the machinery of the mind choked and +balked and stopped working altogether, like an overloaded +motor. I had to reach out in the cold air and +catch hold of Gershom’s arm. I felt a hunger to +cling to something warm and human.</p> +<p>“We call this world of ours a pretty big world,” +Gershom was saying. “But look at Betelgeuse up +there, which Michelson has been able to measure. He +has, at least, succeeded in measuring the angle at the +eye that Betelgeuse subtends, so that after estimating +its parallax as given by a heliometer, it’s merely a +matter of trigonometry to work out the size of the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span> +star. And he estimated Betelgeuse to be two hundred +and sixty million miles in diameter. That means it +would take twenty-seven million of our suns to equal +it in bulk. So that this big world of ours, which takes +so many weeks to crawl about on the fastest ships +and the fastest trains, is really a mote of dust, something +smaller than the smallest pin-prick, compared +to that far-away sun up there on the shoulder of +Orion!”</p> +<p>“Stop!” I cried. “You’re positively giving me a +chill up my spine. You’re making me feel so lonesome, +Gershom, that you’re giving me goose-flesh. +You’re not leaving me anything to get hold of. You +haven’t even left me anything to stand on. I’m only +a little speck of Nothing on a nit of a world in a puny +little universe which is only a little freckle on the face +of some greater universe which is only a lost child +in a city of bigger constellations which in turn have +still lonelier suns to swing about, until I go on and +on, and wonder with a gasp what is beyond the end +of space. But I can’t go on thinking about it. I +simply can’t. It upsets me, the same as an earthquake +would, when you look about for something +solid and find that even your solid old earth is going +back on you!” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span></p> +<p>“On the contrary,” said Gershom as he put down +his telescope, “I know nothing more conducive to +serenity than the study of astronomy. It has a tendency +to teach you, in the first place, just how insignificant +you are in the general scheme of things. The +naked eye, in clear air like this, can see over eight +thousand stars. The larger telescopes reveal a hundred +million stars, and the photographic dry-plate +has shown that there are several thousands of millions +which can be definitely recorded. So that you and +I are not altogether the whole works. And to remember +that, when we are feeling a bit important, is good +for our Ego!”</p> +<p>I didn’t answer him, for I was busy just then +studying the Milky Way. And I couldn’t help feeling +that it must have been on a night like this that a +certain young shepherd watching his flocks on the +uplands of Canaan sat studying the infinite stairways +of star-dust that “sloped through darkness up to +God” and was moved to say: “When I consider the +heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the +stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man that +Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that +Thou visitest him?”</p> +<p>“Yes, Gershom, it’s horribly humiliating,” I said +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span> +as I squinted up at those serene heavens. “They last +forever. And we come and go out, and nobody knows +why!”</p> +<p>“Pardon me,” corrected the literal-minded Gershom. +“They do not last forever. They come and +go out, just as we do. Only they take longer. Consider +the Dipper up there, for instance. A hundred +thousand years from now that Dipper will be perceptibly +altered, for we know the lateral movement +of Dubhe and Benetnasch will give the outer line of +the bowl a greater flare and make the crook of the +handle a trifle sharper. Even a thousand years would +show change enough for instruments to detect. And +a million years will probably show the group pretty +well broken up. But the one regrettable feature, of +course, is that we will not be here to see it.”</p> +<p>“Where will we be?” I asked Gershom.</p> +<p>“I don’t know,” he finally admitted, after an unexpectedly +long silence.</p> +<p>“But will it all go on, forever and forever and forever?”</p> +<p>“To do so is not in the nature of things,” was Gershom’s +quiet-toned reply. “It is the destiny of our +own earth, of course, which most interests us. And +however we look at it, that destiny is a gloomy one. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span> +Its heat may fail. Stupart, in fact, has established +that its temperature is going down one and a half +degrees every thousand years. Or its volcanic elevating +forces may give out, so that the land will +subside and the water wash over it from pole to pole. +Or a comet may wipe up its atmosphere, the same as +one sponge-sweep wipes up moisture from a slate. +Or the sun itself may cool, so that the last of our race +will stand huddled together in a solarium somewhere +on the Equator. Or as our sun rushes toward Lyra, +it may bump into a derelict sun, just as a ship bumps +into a wreck. If that derelict were as big as our sun, +astronomers would see it at least fifteen years before +the collision. For five or six years it would even be +visible to the naked eye, so that the race, or what +remained of the race, would have plenty of time to +think things over and put its house in order. Then, +of course, we’d go up like a singed feather. And +there’d be no more breakfasts to worry over, and no +more wheat to thresh, and no more school fires to +start in the morning, and no more children to make +think you know more than you really do, and not +even any more hearts to ache. There would be just +Emptiness, just voiceless and never-ending Nothingness!” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span></p> +<p>Gershom stopped speaking and sat staring up at +Orion. Then he turned and looked at me.</p> +<p>“What’s the matter?” he asked, for he must have +felt my shiver under the robe.</p> +<p>“Nothing,” I said in a thin and pallid voice. “Only +I think I’ll go back to the house. And I’m going to +make a pot of good hot cocoa!” ... And that’s +mostly what life is: making little pots of cocoa to +keep our bodies warm in the midst of a never-ending +chilliness!</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span> +<a name='TUESDAY_THE_EIGHTH' id='TUESDAY_THE_EIGHTH'></a> +<h2><i>Tuesday the Eighth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>My husband is home again. He came back with the +first blizzard of the winter and had a hard time getting +through to Casa Grande. This gives him all the +excuses he could desire for railing at prairie life. I +told him, after patiently listening to him cussing +about everything in sight, that it was plain to see +that he belonged to the land of the beaver. He +promptly requested to know what I meant by that.</p> +<p>“Doesn’t the beaver regard it as necessary to dam +his home before he considers it fit to live in?” I +retorted. But Duncan, in that estranging new mood +of his, didn’t relax a line. He even announced, a +little later on, that a quick-silver wit might be all +right if it could be kept from running over. And it +was my turn to ask if he had any particular reference +to allusions.</p> +<p>“Well, for one thing,” he told me, “there’s this +tiresome habit of hitching nicknames on to everything +in sight.”</p> +<p>I asked him what names he objected to. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span></p> +<p>“To begin right at home,” he retorted, “I regard +‘Dinkie’ as an especially silly name for a big hulk of +a boy. I think it’s about time that youngster was +called by his proper name.”</p> +<p>I’d never thought about it, to tell the truth. His +real name, I remembered, was Elmer Duncan McKail. +That endearing diminutive of “Dinkie” had stuck to +him from his baby days, and in my fond and foolish +eyes, of course, had always seemed to fit him. But +even Gershom had spoken to me on the matter, +months before, asking me if I preferred the boy to +be known as “Dinkie” to his school mates. And I’d +told Gershom that I didn’t believe we could get rid of +the “Dinkie” if we wanted to. His father, I knew, +had once objected to “Duncan,” as he had no liking +to be dubbed “Old Duncan” while his offspring would +answer to “Young Duncan.” And “Duncan,” as a +name, had never greatly appealed to me. But it is +plain now that I have been remiss in the matter. So +hereafter we’ll have to make an effort to have our +little Dinkie known as Elmer. It’s like bringing a +new child into the family circle, a new child we’re not +quite acquainted with. But these things, I suppose, +have to be faced. So hereafter my laddie shall +officially be known as “Elmer,” Elmer Duncan +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span> +McKail. And I have started the ball rolling by duly +inscribing in his new books “Elmer D. McKail” and +requesting Gershom to address his pupil as “Elmer.”</p> +<p>I’ve been wondering, in the meantime, if Duncan is +going to insist on a revision of all our ranch names, +the names so tangled up with love and good-natured +laughter and memories of the past. Take our horses +alone: Tumble-weed and timeless Tithonus, Buntie +and Briquette, Laughing-gas and Coco the Third, +Mudski and Tarzanette. I’d hate now to lose those +names. They are the register of our friendly love for +our animals.</p> +<p>It begins to creep through this thick head of mine +that my husband no longer nurses any real love for +either these animals or prairie life. And if that is +the case, he will never get anything out of prairie +living. It will be useless for him even to try. So I +may as well do what I can to reconcile myself to the +inevitable. I am not without my moments of revolt. +But in those moods when I feel a bit uppish I remember +about my recent venture into astronomy. What’s +the use of worrying, anyway? There was one ice +age, and there is going to be another ice age. I tell +myself that my troubles are pretty trivial, after all, +since I’m only one of many millions on this earth and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span> +since this earth is only one of many millions of other +earths which will swing about their suns billions and +billions of years after I and my children and my children’s +children are withered into dust.</p> +<p>It rather takes my breath away, at times, and I +shy away from it the same as Pauline Augusta shies +away from the sight of blood. It reminds me of +Chaddie’s New York lady with whom the Bishop +ventured to discuss ultimate destinies. “Yes, I suppose +I shall enter into eternal bliss,” responded this +fair lady, “but would you mind not discussing such +disagreeable subjects at tea-time?”</p> +<p>Speaking of disagreeable subjects, we seem to have +a new little trouble-maker here at Casa Grande. It’s +in the form of a brindle pup called Minty, which +Dinkie—I mean, of course, which Elmer, acquired in +exchange for a jack-knife and what was left of his +<i>Swiss Family Robinson</i>. But Minty has not been +well treated by the world, and was brought home with +a broken leg. So Whinnie and I made splints out of +an old cigar-box cover, and padded the fracture with +cotton wool and bound it up with tape. Minty, in +the moderated spirits of invalidism, was a meek and +well behaved pup during the first few days after his +arrival, sleeping quietly at the foot of Elmer’s bed +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span> +and stumping around after his new master like a war +veteran awaiting his discharge. But now that +Minty’s leg is getting better and he finds himself in +a world that flows with warm milk and much petting, +he betrays a tendency to use any odd article of wearing +apparel as a teething-ring. He has completely +ruined one of my bedroom slippers and done Mexican-drawn-work +on the ends of the two living-room window-curtains. +But what is much more ominous, +Minty yesterday got hold of Dinky-Dunk’s Stetson +and made one side of its rim look as though it had +been put through a meat-chopper. So my lord and +master has been making inquiries about Minty and +Minty’s right of possession. And the order has gone +forth that hereafter no canines are to sleep in this +house. It impresses me as a trifle unreasonable, all +things considered, and Elmer, with a rather unsteady +underlip, has asked me if Minty must be taken away +from him. But I have no intention of countermanding +Duncan’s order. The crust over the volcano is +quite thin enough, as it is. And whatever happens, +I am resolved to be a meek and dutiful wife. But I’ve +had a talk with Whinnie and he’s going to fix up a +comfortable box behind the stove in the bunk-house, +and there the exiled Minty will soon learn to repose +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span> +in peace. It’s marvelous, though, how that little +three-legged animal loves my Dinkie, loves my Elmer, +I should say. He licks my laddie’s shoes and yelps +with joy at the smell of his pillow ... Poor little +abundant-hearted mite, overflowing with love! But +life, I suppose, will see to it that he is brought to +reason. We must learn not to be too happy on this +earth. And we must learn that love isn’t always +given all it asks for.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span> +<a name='THURSDAY_THE_SEVENTEENTH' id='THURSDAY_THE_SEVENTEENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Thursday the Seventeenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>The crust over the volcano has shown itself to be +even thinner than I imagined. The lava-shell gave +way, under our very feet, and I’ve had a glimpse of +the molten fury that can flow about us without our +knowing it. And like so many of life’s tragic +moments, it began out of something that is almost +ridiculous in its triviality.</p> +<p>Night before last, when Struthers was rather late +in setting her bread, she heard Minty scratching and +whimpering at the back door, and without giving +much thought to what she was doing, let him into the +house. Minty, of course, went scampering up to +Dinkie’s bed, where he slept secretly and joyously +until morning. And all might have been well, even +at this, had not Minty’s return to his kingdom gone +to his head. To find some fitting way of expressing +his joy must have taxed that brindle pup’s ingenuity, +for, before any of us were up, he descended to the +living-room, where he delightedly and diligently proceeded +to remove the upholstery from the old Chesterfield. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span> +By the time I came on the scene, at any rate, +there was nothing but a grisly skeleton of the Chesterfield +left. Now, that particular piece of furniture +had known hard use, and there were places where the +mohair had been worn through, and I’d even discussed +the expediency of having the thing done over. +But I knew that Minty’s efforts to hasten this movement +would not meet with approval. So I discreetly +decided to have Whinnie and Struthers remove the +tell-tale skeleton to the bunk-house. Before that +transfer could be effected, however, the Dour Man +invaded the living-room and stood with a cold and +accusatory eye inspecting that monument of destructiveness.</p> +<p>“Where’s Elmer?” he demanded, with a grim look +which started by heart pounding.</p> +<p>“Elmer’s dressing,” I said as quietly as I could. +“Do you want him?”</p> +<p>“I do,” announced my husband, whiter in the face +than I had seen him for many a day.</p> +<p>“What for?” I asked.</p> +<p>“I think you know what for,” he said, meeting my +eye.</p> +<p>“I’m not sure that I do,” I found the courage to +retort. “But I’d prefer being certain.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span></p> +<p>Duncan, instead of answering me, went to the foot +of the stairs and called his son. Then he strode out +of the room and out of the house. Struthers, in the +meantime, circumspectly took possession of Minty, +who was still indecorously shaking a bit of mohair +between his jocund young teeth. She and Minty vanished +from the scene. A moment later, however, Duncan +walked back into the room. He had a riding-quirt +in his hand.</p> +<p>“Where’s that boy?” he demanded.</p> +<p>I went out to the foot of the stairs, where I met +Elmer coming down, buttoning his waist as he came. +For just a moment his eye met mine. It was a questioning +eye, but not a cowardly one. I had intended +to speak to him, but my voice, for some reason, didn’t +respond to my will. So I merely took the boy’s hand +and led him into the living-room. There his father +stood confronting him.</p> +<p>“Did that pup sleep on your bed last night?” +demanded the man with the quirt.</p> +<p>“Yes,” said the child, after a moment of silence.</p> +<p>“Did you hear me say that no dog was to sleep in +this house?” demanded the child’s father.</p> +<p>“Yes,” said Elmer, with his own face as white as +his father’s. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span></p> +<p>“Then I think that’s about enough,” asserted +Duncan, turning a challenging eye in my direction.</p> +<p>“What are you going to do?” I asked. My voice +was shaking, in spite of myself.</p> +<p>“I’m going to whale that youngster within an inch +of his life,” said the master of the house, with a +deadly sort of intentness.</p> +<p>“I don’t want you to do that,” I quavered, wondering +why my words, even as I uttered them, should +seem so inadequate.</p> +<p>“Of course you don’t,” mocked my husband. “But +this is the limit. And what you want isn’t going to +count!”</p> +<p>“I don’t want you to do that,” I repeated. Something +in my voice, I suppose, must have arrested him, +for he stood there, staring at me, with a little knot +coming and going on one side of his skull, just in +front of his upper ear-tip.</p> +<p>“And why not?” he asked, still with that hateful +rough ironic note in his voice.</p> +<p>“Because you don’t know what you’re punishing +this child for,” I told him with all the quietness I +could command. “And because you’re in no fit condition +to do it.”</p> +<p>“You needn’t worry about my condition,” he cried +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span> +out—and I could see by the way he said it that he +was still blind with rage. “Come here, you!” he +called to Dinkie.</p> +<p>It was then that the fatal little bell clanged somewhere +at the back of my head, the bell that rings +down the curtain on all the slowly accumulated civilization +the centuries may have brought to us. I not +only faced my husband with a snort of scorn, but I +tightened my grip on the child’s hand. I tightened +my grip on his hand and backed slowly and deliberately +away until I came to the door of my sewing-room. +Then, still facing my husband, I opened that +door and said: “Go inside, Dinkie.” I could not see +the boy, but I knew that he had done as I told him. +So I promptly slammed the door shut and stood +there facing the gray-lipped man with the riding-quirt +in his hand. He took two slow steps toward +me. His chin was thrust out in a way that made me +think of a fighting-cock’s beak. He had not shaved +that morning, and his squared jaw looked stubbled +and blue and ugly.</p> +<p>“You can’t pull that petticoat stuff this time,” he +said in a hard and throaty tone which I had never +heard from him before. “Get out of my way!”</p> +<p>“You will not beat that child!” And I myself +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span> +couldn’t have made a very pretty picture as I flung +that challenge up in his teeth.</p> +<p>“Get out of my way,” he repeated. He did not +shout it. He said it almost quietly. But I knew, +even before he reached out a shaking hand to thrust +me aside, that he was in deadly earnest, that nothing +I could say would hold him back or turn him aside. +And it was then that my eye fell on the big Colt in +its stained leather holster, hanging up high over one +corner of the book-cabinet, where it had been put +beyond the reach of the children.</p> +<p>I have no memory of giving any thought to the +matter. My reaction must have been both immediate +and automatic. I don’t think I even intended to bunt +my husband in the short-ribs the way I did, for the +impact of my body half twisted him about and sent +him staggering back several steps. All I know is that +holster and belt came tumbling down as I sprang and +caught at the Colt handle. And I was back at the +door before I had even shaken the revolver free. I +was back just in time to hear my husband say, rather +foolishly, for the third time: “Get out of my way!”</p> +<p>“You stay back there!” I called, quite as foolishly, +for by this time I had the Colt balanced in my hand +and was pointing it directly at his body. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span></p> +<p>He stopped short, with a vacuous look in his eyes.</p> +<p>“<i>You fool!</i>” he said, in a sort of strangled whisper. +But it was my face, and not the weapon, that he was +staring at all the while.</p> +<p>“Stay back!” I said again, with my eyes fixed on +his.</p> +<p>He hesitated, for a moment, and made a sound that +was like the short bark of a laugh. It was too hard +and horrible, though, ever to be taken for laughter. +And I knew that he was not going to do what I had +said.</p> +<p>“Stay back!” I warned him still again. But he +stepped forward, with a grim sort of deliberation, +with his challenging gaze locked on mine. I could +hear a thousand warning voices, somewhere at the +back of my brain, and at the same time I could hear +a thousand singing devils in my blood trying to +drown out those voices. I could see my husband’s +narrowed eyes slowly widen, slowly open like the gills +of a dying fish, for the hate that he must have seen +on my face obviously arrested him. It arrested him, +but it arrested him only for a moment. He dropped +his eyes to the Colt in my hand. Then he moved +deliberately forward until his body was almost +against the barrel-end. I must have known what it +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span> +meant, just as he must have known what it meant. +It was his final challenge. And I must have met that +challenge. For, without quite knowing it, I shut my +eyes and pulled the trigger.</p> +<p>There had been something awful, I know, in that +momentary silence. And there was something awful +in the sound that came after it, though it was not the +sound my subconscious mind was waiting for. It +was distinct enough and significant enough, heaven +knows. But instead of the explosion of a shell it was +the sharp snap of steel against steel.</p> +<p>The revolver was empty. It was empty-had been +empty for weeks. But the significant fact remained +that I had deliberately pulled the trigger. I had +stood ready, in my moment of madness, to kill the +man that I lived with....</p> +<p>Had a ball of lead gone through that man’s body, +I don’t think he could have staggered back with a +more startled expression on his face. He looked +more than bewildered; he looked vaguely humiliated, +oddly and wordlessly affronted, as he stood leaning +against the table-edge, breathing hard, his skin a +mottled blue-white to the very lips. He made an +effort to speak, but no sound came from him. For a +moment the dreadful thought raced through me that +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span> +I had indeed shot him, that in some mysterious way +he was mortally hurt, without this particular bullet +announcing itself as bullets usually do. I looked at +the revolver, stupidly. It seemed to have grown +heavy, as heavy as a cook-stove in my hand.</p> +<p>“You’d do that?” whispered my husband, very +slowly, with a stricken light in his eyes which I +couldn’t quite understand. I intended to put the +Colt on the table. But something must have been +wrong with my vision, for the loathsome thing fell +loathsomely to the floor. I felt sick and shaken and +a horrible misty feeling of homelessness settled down +about me, of a sudden, for I remembered how closely +I had skirted the black gulf of murder.</p> +<p>“Oh, Dinky-Dunk!” I blubbered, weakly, as I +groped toward him. He must have thought that I +was going to fall, for he put out his arm and held me +up. He held me up, but there wasn’t an atom of +warmth in his embrace. He held me up about the +same as he’d hold up an open wheat-sack that threatened +to tumble over on his granary floor. I don’t +know what reaction it was that took my strength +away from me, but I clung to his shoulders and +sobbed there. I felt as alone in the gray wastes of +time as one of Gershom’s lost stars. And I knew that +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span> +my Dinky-Dunk would never bend down now and +whisper into my ear any word of comfort, any word +of forgiveness. For, however things may have been +at the first, I was the one who was now so hopelessly +in the wrong, <i>I</i> was the big offender. And that +knowledge only added to my misery as I stood there +clinging to my husband’s shoulders and blubbering +“Oh, Dinky-Dunk!”</p> +<p>It must have grown distasteful to him, my foolish +hanging on to him as though he were a hitching-post, +for he finally said in a remote voice: “I guess we’ve +had about enough of this.” He led me rather ceremoniously +to a chair, and slowly let me down in it. +Then he crossed over to the old leather holster and +picked it up, and stooped for the revolver, and +pushed it down in the holster and buckled the cover-flap +and tossed the whole thing up to the top of the +book-cabinet again. Then, without speaking to me, +he walked slowly out of the room.</p> +<p>I was tempted to call him back, but I knew, on +second thought, that it would be no use. I merely +sat there, staring ahead of me. Then I shut my eyes +and tried to think. I don’t know why, but I was +thinking about the bigness of Betelgeuse, which was +twenty-seven million times as big as our sun and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span> +which was going on through its millions of miles of +space without knowing anything about Chaddie +McKail and what had happened to her that morning. +I was wondering if there were worlds between me and +Betelgeuse with women on them, with women as alone +as I was, when I felt a pair of small arms tighten +about my knees and an adoring small voice whispered +“Mummsy!” And I forgot about Betelgeuse. For +it was my Dinkie there, with his little rough hand +reaching hungrily for mine....</p> +<p>Minty has been removed from Casa Grande. I +took him over to the Teetzel ranch in the car, and +young Dode Teetzel is to get a dollar a week for +looking after him and feeding him. Only Elmer and +I know of his whereabouts. And once a week the +boy can canter over on Buntie and keep in touch with +his pup.</p> +<p>We have a tacit understanding that the occurrences +of yesterday morning are a closed chapter, are +not to be referred to by word or deed. Duncan himself +found it necessary to team in to Buckhorn and +left word with Struthers that he would stay in town +over night. The call for the Buckhorn trip was, of +course, a polite fabrication, an expedient <i>pax in bello</i> +to permit the dust of battle to settle a little about +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span> +this troubled house of McKail. All day to-day I +have felt rather languid. I suppose it’s the lethargy which +naturally follows after all violence. Any +respectable woman, I used to think, could keep a +dead-line in her soul, beyond which the impulses of +evil dare not venture. But I must have been wrong.... All +week I’ve been looking for a letter from +Peter Ketley. But for once in his life he seems to +have forgotten us.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_TWENTIETH' id='SUNDAY_THE_TWENTIETH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Twentieth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I’ve been wondering to-day just what I’d do if I +had to earn my own living. I could run a ranch, I +suppose, if I still had one, but two or three years of +such work would see me a hatchet-faced old termagant +with fallen arches and a prairie-squint. Or I +could raise chickens and peddle dated eggs in a +flivver-and fresco hen-coops with whitewash until +the trap-nest of time swallowed me up in oblivion. +Or I could take a rural school somewhere and teach +the three R’s to little Slovenes and Frisians and +French-Canadians even more urgently in need of +soap and water. Or perhaps I could be housekeeper +for one of our new beef-kings in his new Queen-Anne +Norman-Georgian Venetian palace of Alberta sandstone +with tesselated towers and bungalow sleeping-porches. +Or I might even peddle magazines, or start +a little bakery in one of the little board-fronted shops +of Buckhorn, or take in plain sewing and dispose of +home-made preserves to the élite of the community. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span></p> +<p>But each and all of them would be mere gestures +of defeat. I’m of no value to the world. There was a +time when I regarded myself as quite a Somebody, +and prided myself on having an idea or +two. Didn’t Percy even once denominate me as +“a window-dresser”? There was a time when I +didn’t have to wait to see if the pearl-handled knife +was the one intended for the fish-course, and I could +walk across a waxed floor without breaking my neck +and do a bit of shopping in the Rue de la Paix without +being taken for a tourist. But that was a long, +long time ago. And life during the last few years has +both humbled me and taught me my limitations. I’m +a house-wife, now, and nothing more—and not even +a successful house-wife. I’ve let everything fall away +except the thought of my home and my family. And +now I find that the basket into which I so carefully +packed all my eggs hasn’t even a bottom to it.</p> +<p>But I’ve no intention of repining. Heaven knows +I’ve never wanted to sit on the Mourner’s Bench. +I’ve never tried to pull a sour mug, as Dinky-Dunk +once inelegantly expressed it. I love life and the joy +of life, and I want all of it I can get. I believe in +laughter, and I’ve a weakness for men and women who +can sing as they work. But I’ve blundered into a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span> +black frost, and even though there was something to +sing about, there’s scarcely a blue-bird left to do the +singing. But sometime, somewhere, there’ll be an end +to that silence. The blight will pass, and I’ll break +out again. I know it. I don’t intend to be held +down. I <i>can’t</i> be held down. I haven’t the remotest +idea of how it’s going to happen, but I’m going to +love life again, and be happy, and carol out like a +meadow-lark on a blue and breezy April morning. +It may not come to-morrow, and it may not come the +next day. But it’s going to come. And knowing it’s +going to come, I can afford to sit tight, and abide +my time....</p> +<p>I’ve just had a letter from Uncle Chandler, enclosing +snap-shots of the place he’s bought in New +Jersey. It looks very palatial and settled and Old-Worldish, +shaded and shadowed with trees and softened +with herbage, dignified by the hand of time. It +reminds me how many and many a long year will have +to go by before our bald young prairie can be tamed +and petted into a homeyness like that. Uncle +Chandler has rather startled me by suggesting that +we send Elmer through to him, to go to school in the +East. He says the boy can attend Montclair Academy, +that he can be taken there and called for every +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span> +day by faithful old Fisher, in the cabriolet, and that +on Sunday he can be toted regularly to St. Luke’s +Episcopal Church, and occasionally go into New +York for some of the better concerts, and even have +a governess of his own, if he’d care for it. And in +case I should be worrying about his welfare Uncle +Chandler would send me a weekly night-letter “describing +the condition and the activities of the child,” +as the letter expresses it. It sounds very appealing, +but every time I try to think it over my heart goes +down like a dab-chick. My Dinkie is such a little +fellow. And he’s my first-born, my man-child, and +he means so much in my life. Yet he and his father +are not getting along very well together. It would +be better, in many respects, if the boy could get away +for a while, until the raw edges healed over again. +It would be better for both of them. But there’s one +thing that would happen: he would grow away from +his mother. He’d come back to me a stranger. He’d +come back a little ashamed of his shabby prairie +mater, with her ten-years-old style of hair-dressing +and her moss-grown ideas of things and her bald-looking +prairie home with no repose and no dignifying +background and neither a private gym nor a +butler to wheel in the cinnamon-toast. He’d be having +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span> +all those things, under Uncle Chandler’s roof: +he’d get used to them and he’d expect them.</p> +<p>But there’s one thing he wouldn’t and couldn’t +have. He wouldn’t have his mother. And no one can +take a mother’s place, with a boy like that. No one +could understand him, and make allowances for him, +and explain things to him, as his own mother could. +I’ve been thinking about that, all afternoon as I +ironed his waists and his blue flannellet pajamas +with frogs on like his dad’s. And I’ve been thinking +of it all evening as I patched his brown corduroy +knickers and darned his little stockings and balled +them up in a neat little row. I tried to picture +myself as packing them away in a trunk, and putting +in beside them all the clothes he would need, and the +books that he could never get along without, and the +childish little treasures he’d have to carry away to +his new home. But it was too much for me. There +was one thing, I began to see, which could never, +never happen. I could never willingly be parted from +my Dinkie. I could think of nothing to pay me up +for losing him. And he needed me as I needed him. +For good or bad, we’d have to stick together. Mother +and son, together in some way we’d have to sink or +swim!</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span> +<a name='WEDNESDAY_THE_THIRTIETH' id='WEDNESDAY_THE_THIRTIETH'></a> +<h2><i>Wednesday the Thirtieth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>The tension has been relieved by Dinky-Dunk +going off to Calgary. Along with him he has taken +a rather formidable amount of his personal belongings. +But he explains this by stating that business +will keep him in the city for at least six or seven +weeks. He has been talking a good deal about the +Barcona coal-mine of late, and the last night he was +with us he talked to Gershom for an hour and more +about the advantages of those newer mines over the +Drumheller. The newer field has a solid slate roof +which makes drifting safe and easy, a finer type of +coal, and a chance for big money once the railway +runs in its spur and the officials wake up to the +importance of giving them the cars they need. The +whole country, Dinky-Dunk claims, is underlaid with +coal, and our province alone is estimated to contain +almost seventeen per cent. of the world’s known supply. +And my lord and master expressed the intention +of being in on the clean-up.</p> +<p>I don’t know how much of this was intended for +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196' name='page_196'></a>196</span> +my ears. But it served to disquiet me, for reasons +I couldn’t quite discern. And the same vague depression +crept over me when Dinky-Dunk took his +departure. I kept up my air of blitheness, it is true, +to the last moment, and was as casual as you please +in helping Duncan to pack and reminding him to put +his shaving-things in his bag and making sure the +last button was on his pajamas. I kissed him +good-by, as a dutiful wife ought, and held Pauline +Augusta up in the doorway so that she might attempt +a last-minute hand-waving at her daddy.</p> +<p>But I slumped, once it was all over. I felt mysteriously +alone in an indifferent big world with the +rime of winter creeping along its edges. Even Gershom, +after the children had had their lesson, became +conscious of my preoccupation and went so far as to +ask if I wasn’t feeling well.</p> +<p>I smilingly assured him that there was nothing +much wrong with me.</p> +<p>“<i>Lerne zu leiden ohne zu klagen!</i>” as the dying +Frederick said to a singularly foolish son.</p> +<p>“But you’re upset?” persisted Gershom, with his +valorous brand of timidity that so often reminds me +of a robin defending her eggs.</p> +<p>“No, it’s not that,” I said with a shake of the head. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span> +“It’s only that I’m—I’m a trifle too chilly to be comfortable.”</p> +<p>And the foolish youth, at that, straightway fell to +stoking the fire. I had to laugh a little. And that +made him study me with solemn eyes.</p> +<p>“Just think, Gershom,” I said as I gathered up +my sewing, “my heart is perishing of cold in a province +which is estimated to contain almost seventeen +per cent. of the world’s known coal supply!”</p> +<p>And that, apparently, left him with something to +think about as I made my way off to bed ... It’s +hard to write coherently, I find, when you’re not living +coherently ...</p> +<p>Syd Woodward, of Buckhorn, having learned that +I can drive a tractor, has asked me if I’ll take part in +the plowing-match to-morrow. And I’ve given my +promise to show Mere Man what a woman can do in +the matter of turning a mile-long furrow. I feel +rather audacious over it all. And I’m glad to inject +a little excitement into life ... I’m saving up for +a new sewing-machine ... Tarzanette has got +rather badly cut up in some of our barb-wire fencing.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span> +<a name='FRIDAY_THE_FIFTEENTH' id='FRIDAY_THE_FIFTEENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Friday the Fifteenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>The plowing-match was good fun, and I enjoyed it +even more than I had expected. The men “kidded” +me a good deal, and gave me a cheer at the end (I +don’t quite know whether it was for my work or my +costume) and I had to pose for photographs, and a +moving-picture man even followed me about for a +round, shooting me as I turned my prairie stubble +upside down. But the excitement of the plowing-match +has been eclipsed by a bit of news which has +rather taken my breath away. <i>It is Peter Ketley who +has bought the Harris Ranch.</i></p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span> +<a name='SATURDAY_THE_TWENTYTHIRD' id='SATURDAY_THE_TWENTYTHIRD'></a> +<h2><i>Saturday the Twenty-Third</i></h2> +</div> +<p>The rains have brought mushrooms, slathers of +mushrooms, and I joy in gathering them.</p> +<p>Yesterday afternoon I rode past the Harris +Ranch. The old place brought back a confusion of +memories. But I was most disturbed by the signs +of building going on there. It seems to mean a new +shack on Alabama Ranch. And a new shack of very +considerable dimensions. I’ve been wondering what +this implies. I don’t know whether to be elated or +depressed. And what business is it, after all, of +mine?</p> +<p>My Dinkie—I have altogether given up trying to +call my Dinkie anything but Dinkie—came home two +evenings ago with a discolored eye and a distinct air +of silence. Gershom, too, seemed equally reticent. +So I set about discreetly third-degreeing Poppsy, +who finally acknowledged, with awe in her voice, that +Dinkie had been in a fight.</p> +<p>It was, according to my petticoated Herodotus, a +truly terrible fight. Noses got bloodied, and no one +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span> +could make the fighters stop. But Dinkie was unquestionably +the conqueror. Yet, oddly enough, I +am informed that he cried all through the combat. +He was a crying fighter. And he had his fight with +Climmie O’Lone—trust the Irish to look for trouble!—who +seems to have been accepted as the ring-master +of his younger clan. Their differences arose out of +the accusation that Dinkie, my bashful little Dinkie, +had been forcing his unwelcomed attention on one +Doreen O’Lone, Climmie’s younger sister. That’s +absurd, of course. And Dinkie must have realized it. +He didn’t want to fight, acknowledged Poppsy, from +the first. He even cried over it. And Doreen also +cried. And Poppsy herself joined in.</p> +<p>I fancy it was a truly Homeric struggle, for it +seems to have lasted for round after round. It +lasted, I have been able to gather, until Climmie was +worsted and down on his back crying “Enough!” +Which Poppsy reports Dinkie made him say three +times, until Doreen nodded and said she’d heard. +But my young son, apparently, is one of those crying +fighters, who are reckoned, if I remember right, as +the worst breed of belligerents!</p> +<p>I have decided not to tell Dinkie what I know. +But I’m rather anxious to get a glimpse of this young +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span> +Mistress Doreen, for whom lances are already being +shattered in the lists of youth. The O’Lones regard +themselves as the landed aristocracy of the Elk-trail +District. And Doreen O’Lone impresses me as a +very musical appellative. Yet I prefer to keep my +kin free from all entangling alliances, even though +they have to do with a cattle-king’s offspring....</p> +<p>I had a short letter from Dinky-Dunk to-day, +asking me to send on a package of papers which he +had left in a pigeon-hole of his desk here. It was a +depressingly non-committal little note, without a +glimmer of warmth between the lines. I’m afraid +there’s a certain ugly truth which will have to be +faced some day. But I intend to stick to the ship +as long as the ship can keep afloat. I am so essentially +a family woman that I can’t conceive of life +without its home circle. Home, however, is where the +heart is. And it seems to take more than one heart +to keep it going. I keep reminding myself that I +have my children at the same time that I keep asking +myself why my children are not enough, why they +can’t seem to fill my cup of contentment as they +ought. Now that their father is so much away, a +great deal of their training is falling on my shoulders. +And I must, in some way, be a model to them. So +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span> +I’ll continue to show them what a Penelope I can be. +Perhaps, after all, they will prove our salvation. For +our offspring ought to be the snow-fences along the +wind-harried rails of matrimony. They should prevent +drifting along the line, and from terminal to +lonely terminal should keep traffic open ... I have +to-night induced Poppsy to write a long and affectionate +letter to her <i>pater</i>, telling him all the news of +Casa Grande. Perhaps it will awaken a little pang +in the breast of her absent parent.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span> +<a name='MONDAY_THE_TWENTYFIFTH' id='MONDAY_THE_TWENTYFIFTH'></a> +<h2><i>Monday the Twenty-Fifth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I have aroused the ire of the Dour Man. He has +sent me a message strongly disapproving of my conduct. +He even claims that I’ve humiliated him. I +never dreamed, when that movie-man with the camera +followed me about at the plowing-match, that my +husband would wander into a Calgary picture-house +and behold his wife in driving gauntlets and Stetson +mounted on a tractor and twiddling her fingers at the +camera-operator, just to show how much at home she +felt! Dinky-Dunk must have experienced a distinctly +new thrill when he saw his own wife come riding +through that pictorial news weekly. He would have +preferred not recognizing me, I suppose. But there +I was, duly named and labeled—and hence the ponderous +little note of disapproval.</p> +<p>But I’m not going to let Duncan start a quarrel +over trivialities like this. I intend to sit tight. +There’d be little use in argument, anyway, for Duncan +would only ignore me as the predatory tom-cat +ignores the foolishly scolding robin. I’m going to be +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204' name='page_204'></a>204</span> +a regular mallard, and stick to these home regions +until the ice forms. And our most mountainous +troubles, after all, can’t quite survive being exteriorated +through the ink-well. It relieves me to write +about them. But I wish I had a woman of my own +age to talk to. I get a bit lonely, now that winter +is slipping down out of the North again. And I +find that I’m not so companionable as I ought to be. +It comes home to me, now and then, how far away +from the world we are, how remote from everything +that counts. The tragedy of life with Chaddie +McKail, I suppose, is that she’s let existence narrow +down to just one thing, to her family. Other women +seem to have substitutes. But I’ve about forgotten +how to be a social animal. I seem to grow as segregative +as the timber-wolf. There’s nothing for me +in the woman’s club life one gets out here. I can’t +force myself into church work, and the rural reading-club +is something beyond me. I simply couldn’t +endure those Women’s Institute meetings which open +with a hymn and end up with sponge-cake and green +tea, after a platitudinous paper on the Beauty of +Prairie Life. It has its beauties, God knows, or we’d +all go mad. We women, in this brand-new land, try +to bolster ourselves up with the belief that we have +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span> +greatnesses which the rest of the world must get +along without. But that is only the flaunting of +<i>La Panache</i>, the feather of courage in our cap of +discouragement. There is so much, so much, we are +denied! So much we must do without! So much we +must see go to others! So much we must never even +hope for! Oh, pioneers, great you are and great you +must be, to endure what you have endured! You +must be strong in your hours of secret questioning +and you must be strong in your quest for consolation. +If nothing else, you must at least be strong. And +these western men of ours should all be strong men, +should all be great men, because they must have been +the children of great mothers. A prairie mother +<i>has</i> to be a great woman. She must be great to +survive, to endure, to leave her progeny behind her. +I’ve heard the Wise Men talk about nature looking +after her own. I’ve heard sentimentalists sing about +the strength that lies in the soil. But, oh, pioneers, +you know what you know! In your secret heart of +hearts you remember the lonely hours, the lonely +years, the lonely graves! For in the matter of infant +mortality alone, prairie life shows a record shocking +to read. We are making that better, it is true, with +our district nursing and our motherhood clubs and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206' name='page_206'></a>206</span> +our rural phones and our organized letting in of +light and passing on of knowledge. We are not so +overburdened as those nobler women who went before +us. But, oh, pioneers along these lonely northern +trails, I salute you and honor you for your courage! +Your greatness will never be known. It will be seen +only in the great country which you gave up your +lives to bring to birth!</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207' name='page_207'></a>207</span> +<a name='WEDNESDAY_THE_TWENTYSEVENTH' id='WEDNESDAY_THE_TWENTYSEVENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Wednesday the Twenty-Seventh</i></h2> +</div> +<p>What weather-cocks we are! My blue Monday is +over and done with, this is a crystalline winter day +with all the earth at peace with itself, and I’ve just +had a letter from Peter asking if I could take care +of his sister’s girl, Susie Mumford, until after Christmas. +The Mumfords, it seems, are going through +the divorce-mill, and Susie’s mother is anxious that +her one and only child should be afar from the scene +when the grist of liberty is a-grinding.</p> +<p>I know nothing of Susie except what Peter has told +me, that she is not yet nineteen, that she is intelligent, +but obstreperous, and much wiser than she pretends +to be, that the machinery of life has always run much +too smoothly about her for her own good, and that a +couple of months of prairie life might be the means +of introducing her to her own soul.</p> +<p>That’s all I know of Susie, but I shall welcome her +to Casa Grande. I’ll be glad to see a city girl again, +to talk over face-creams and the <i>Follies</i> and Tchaikowsky +and brassieres and Strindberg with. And +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208' name='page_208'></a>208</span> +I’ll be glad to do a little toward repaying big-hearted +old Peter for all his kindnesses of the past. Susie +may be both sophisticated and intractable, but I +await her with joy. She seems almost the answer to +my one big want.</p> +<p>But Casa Grande, I have been realizing, will have +to be refurbished for its coming guest. We have +grown a bit shoddy about the edges here. It’s hard +to keep a house spick and span, with two active-bodied +children running about it. And my heart, I +suppose, has not been in that work of late. But I’ve +been on a tour of inspection, and I realize it’s time to +reform. So Struthers and I are about to doll up +these dilapidated quarters of ours. And I intend +to have my dolorously neglected Guest Room (for +such I used to call it) done over before the arrival +of Susie....</p> +<p>I rode over to the Teetzels’ this afternoon, to +explain about our cattle getting through on their +land. It was the road-workers who broke down the +Teetzel fence, to squat on a coulée-corner for their +camp. And they hadn’t the decency to restore what +they had wrecked. So Bud Teetzel and I rode seven +miles up the new turn-pike and overtook those road-workers +and I harangued their foreman for a full +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209' name='page_209'></a>209</span> +fifteen minutes. But it made little impression on +him. He merely grinned and stared at me with a +sort of insolent admiration on his face. And when I +had finished he audibly remarked to one of his teamsters +that I made a fine figure of a woman on horseback.</p> +<p>Bud says they’re thinking of selling out if they can +get their price. The old folks want to move to Victoria, +and Bud and his brother have a hankering to +try their luck up in the Peace River District. I +asked Bud if he wouldn’t rather settle down in one +of the big cities. He merely laughed at me. “No +thank you, lady! This old prair-ee is comp’ny +enough for me!” he said as he loped, brown as a nut, +along the trail as tawny as a lion’s mane, with a sky +of steel-cold blue smiling down on his lopsided old +sombrero. I studied him with a less impersonal eye. +He was a handsome and husky young giant, with the +joy of life still frankly imprinted on his face.</p> +<p>“Bud,” I said as I loped along beside him, “why +haven’t you ever married?”</p> +<p>That made him laugh again. Then he turned +russet as he showed me the white of an eye.</p> +<p>“All the peaches seemed picked, in this district,” +he found the courage to proclaim. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210' name='page_210'></a>210</span></p> +<p>This made me trot out the old platitude about the +fish in the sea being as good as any ever caught—and +there really ought to be an excise tax on platitudes, +for being addicted to them is quite as bad as +being addicted to alcohol, and quite as benumbing to +the brain.</p> +<p>But Bud, with his next speech, brought me up +short.</p> +<p>“Say, lady, if <i>you</i> was still in the runnin’ I’d give +’em a race that’d make a coyote look like a caterpillar +on crutches!”</p> +<p>He said it solemnly, and his solemnity kept it +respectful. But it was my turn to laugh. And +ridiculous as it may sound, this doesn’t impress me as +such a dark world as I had imagined! A woman, +after all, is a good deal like mother earth: each has +to be cultivated a little to keep it mellow.</p> +<p>... Where the Female is, there also is the Unexpected. +For when I got home I found that my +decorous Poppsy, my irreproachable Poppsy, had +succumbed before the temptation to investigate +my new sewing-machine. And once having nibbled +at the fruit of the tree of knowledge, she went +rampaging through the whole garden. She made +a stubborn effort to exhaust the possibilities of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211' name='page_211'></a>211</span> +all the little hemmers, and tried the shirrer and +the fire-stitch ruffler, and obviously had a fling +at the binder and a turn at the tucker. What +she did to the tension-spring heaven only knows. +And my brand-new machine is on the blink. And my +meek-eyed little Poppsy isn’t as impeccable as the +world about her imagined!</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212' name='page_212'></a>212</span> +<a name='WEDNESDAY_THE_THIRD' id='WEDNESDAY_THE_THIRD'></a> +<h2><i>Wednesday the Third</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Susie Mumford arrived yesterday. The weather, +heaven be thanked, was perfect, an opal day with the +earth as fresh-smelling as Poppsy just out of her +bath. There was just enough chill in the air to make +one’s blood tingle and just enough warmth in the +sunlight to make it feel like a benediction. Whinstane +Sandy, in fact, avers that we’re in for a spell +of Indian Summer.</p> +<p>I motored in to Buckhorn and met Susie, who +wasn’t in the least what I expected. I was looking +for a high-spirited and insolent-eyed young lady +who’d probably be traveling with a French maid and +a van-load of trunks, after the manner of Lady +Alicia. But the Susie I met was a tired and listless +and rather white-faced girl who reminds me just +enough of her Uncle Peter to make me like her. The +poor child knows next to nothing of the continent on +which she was born, and the immensity of our West +has rather appalled her. She told me, driving home, +that she had never before been this side of the Adirondacks. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213' name='page_213'></a>213</span> +Yet she has crossed the Atlantic eight times +and knows western Europe about as well as she knows +Long Island itself. There is a matter-of-factness +about Susie which makes her easy to get along with. +Poppsy took to her at once and was a garrulous and +happy witness of Susie’s unpacking. Dinkie, on the +other hand, developed an altogether unlooked-for +shyness and turned red when Susie kissed him. There +was no melting of the ice until the strange lady produced +a very wonderful toy air-ship, which you wind +up and which soars right over the haystacks, if you +start it right. This was a present which Peter sent +out. Dinkie, in fact, spent most of his spare time +last night writing a letter to his Uncle Peter, a letter +which he intimated he had no wish for the rest of the +family to read. He was willing to acknowledge, this +morning, that since he and Susie both had the same +Uncle Peter, they really ought to be cousins....</p> +<p>Susie has not been sleeping well, and for all her +weariness last night had to take five grains of veronal +before she could settle down. The result is that she +looks whiter than ever this morning and ate very +little of Struthers’ really splendiferous breakfast. +But she made a valorous enough effort to be blithe +and has rambled about Casa Grande with the febrile, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214' name='page_214'></a>214</span> +quick curiosity of a young setter, making friends +with the animals and for the first time in her life +picking an egg out of a nest. I was afraid, at first, +that she was going to complain about the quietness +of existence out here, for our pace must seem a slow +one, after New York. But Susie says the one thing +she wants is peace. It’s not often a girl not yet out +of her teens makes any such qualified demand on +life. I can’t help feeling that the break-up of her +family must be depressing her more than she pretends. +She speaks about it in a half-joking way, +however, and said this morning: “Dad certainly deserves +a little freedom!” We sat for an hour at the +breakfast-table, pow-wowing about everything under +the blessed sun.</p> +<p>In some ways Susie is a very mature woman, for +nineteen and three-quarters. She is also an exceptionally +companionable one. She has a sort of lapis-lazuli +eye with paler streaks in the iris, like banded +agate. It is a brooding eye, with a great deal of +beauty in it. And she has a magnolia-white skin +which one doesn’t often see on the prairie. It’s not +the sort of skin, in fact, which could last very long +on the open range. It’s the sort that’s had too much +bevel plate between it and the buffeting winds of the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215' name='page_215'></a>215</span> +world. But it’s lovely to look upon, especially when +it’s touched with its almost imperceptible shell-pink +of excitement as it was this afternoon when Susie +climbed on Buntie and tried a canter or two about +the corrals. Susie, I noticed, rode well. I couldn’t +quite make out why her riding made me at once think +of Theobald Gustav. But she explained, later, that +she had been taught by a German riding-master—and +then I understood.</p> +<p>But I must not overlook Gershom, who duly +donned his Sunday best in honor of Susie’s arrival +and who is already undertaking to educate the brooding-eyed +young lady from the East. He explained to +her that there were eight hundred and fifty thousand +square miles of Canada still unexplored, and Susie +said: “Then lead me into the most far-away part of +it!” And when he told her, during their first meal +together, that the human brain was estimated to contain +half a billion cells and that the number of brain +impressions collected by an average person during +fifty years of life aggregated three billion, one hundred +and fifty-five million, seven hundred and sixty +thousand, Susie sighed and said it was no wonder +women were so contradictory. Which impressed me +as very like one of my own retorts to Gershom. I +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216' name='page_216'></a>216</span> +saw Susie studying him, studying him with a quiet +and meditative eye. “I believe your Gershom is one +of the few good men in the world,” she afterward +acknowledged to me. And I’ve been wondering why +one so young should be saturated with cynicism.</p> +<p>A small incident occurred to-night which disturbed +me more than I can explain to myself. Susie, who +had been looking through one of Dinkie’s school +scribblers, guardedly passed the book over to me +where I sat sewing in front of the fire. For, whatever +may happen, a prairie mother can always find plenty +of sewing to do. I looked at the bottom of the page +which Susie pointed out to me. There I saw two +names, one above the other, with certain of the letters +stricken out, two names written like this:</p> +<div style='margin:5px auto; text-align:center;'> +<img alt='love and friendship cypher' src='images/illus-216.png' /> +</div> +<p>And that set me off in a brown study which even +Susie seemed to fathom. She smiled understandingly +and turned and inspected Dinkie, bent over his arithmetic, +with an entirely new curiosity.</p> +<p>“I suppose that’s what every mother has to face, +some day,” she said as she sat down beside me in front +of the fire. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217' name='page_217'></a>217</span></p> +<p>But it seemed a fire without warmth. Life, apparently, +had brought me to another of its Great +Divides. My boy had a secret apart from his +mother. My son was no longer all mine.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218' name='page_218'></a>218</span> +<a name='FRIDAY_THE_FIFTH' id='FRIDAY_THE_FIFTH'></a> +<h2><i>Friday the Fifth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>This morning at breakfast, when Dinkie and I were +alone at the table, I crossed over to him and sat down +beside him.</p> +<p>“Dinkie,” I said, with my hand on his tousled +young head, “whom do you love best in all the +world?”</p> +<p>“Mummy!” he said, looking me straight in the eye. +And at that I drank in a deep breath.</p> +<p>“Are you sure?” I demanded.</p> +<p>“As sure as death and taxes,” he said with his +one-sided little smile. It was a phrase which his +father used to use, on similar occasions, in the long, +long ago. And it didn’t quite drive the mists out of +my heart.</p> +<p>“And who comes next?” I asked, with my hand still +on his head.</p> +<p>“Buntie,” he replied, with what I suspected to be a +barricaded look on his face.</p> +<p>“No, no,” I told him. “It has to be a human being.”</p> +<p>“Then Poppsy,” he admitted. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219' name='page_219'></a>219</span></p> +<p>“And who next?” I persisted.</p> +<p>“Whinnie!” exclaimed my son.</p> +<p>But I had to shake my head at that.</p> +<p>“Aren’t you forgetting somebody very important?” +I hinted.</p> +<p>“Who?” he asked, deepening just a trifle in color.</p> +<p>“How about daddy?” I asked. “Isn’t it about +time for him there?”</p> +<p>“Yes, daddy,” he dutifully repeated. But his +face cleared, and my own heart clouded, as he went +through the empty rite.</p> +<p>Dinkie was studying that clouded face of mine, by +this time, and I began to feel embarrassed. But I +was determined to see the thing through. It was +hard, though, for me to say what I wanted to.</p> +<p>“Isn’t there somebody, somebody else you are +especially fond of?” I inquired, as artlessly as I +could. And it hurt like cold steel to think that I +had to fence with my own boy in such a fashion.</p> +<p>Dinkie looked at me and then he looked out of the +window.</p> +<p>“I think I like Susie,” he finally admitted.</p> +<p>“But in your own life, Dinkie, in your work and +your play, in your school, isn’t—isn’t there <i>somebody</i>?” +I found the courage to ask. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220' name='page_220'></a>220</span></p> +<p>Dinkie’s face grew thoughtful. For just a moment, +I thought I caught a touch of the Holbein Astronomer +in it.</p> +<p>“There’s lots of boys and girls I like,” he noncommittally +asserted. And I began to see that it was +hopeless. My boy had reservations from his own +mother, reservations which I would be compelled to +respect. He was no longer entirely and unequivocally +mine. There was a wild-bird part of him which had +escaped, which I could never recapture and cage +again. The thing that his father had foretold was +really coming about. My laddie would some day +grow out of my reach. I would lose him. And my +happiness, which had been trying its wings for the +last few days, came down out of the sky like a shot +duck. All day long, for Susie’s sake, I’ve tried to +be light-hearted. But my efforts make me think of a +poor old worn-out movie-hall piano doing its pathetic +level best to be magnificently blithe. It’s a meaningless +clatter in a meaningless world.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221' name='page_221'></a>221</span> +<a name='THURSDAY_THE_ELEVENTH' id='THURSDAY_THE_ELEVENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Thursday the Eleventh</i></h2> +</div> +<p>It ought to be winter, according to the almanac, +but our wonderful Indian Summer weather continues. +Susie and I have been “blue-doming” to-day. We converted +ourselves into a mounted escort for Gershom +and the kiddies as far as the schoolhouse, and then +rode on to Dead Horse Lake, in the hope of getting +a few duck. But the weather was too fine, though I +managed to bring down a couple of mallard, after +one of which Susie, having removed her shoes and +stockings, waded knee-deep in the slough. She enjoys +that sort of thing: it’s something so entirely new to +the child of the city. And Susie, I might add, is +already looking much better. She is sleeping soundly, +at last, and has promised me there shall be no more +night-caps of veronal. What is more, I am getting +to know her better—and I have several revisions to +make.</p> +<p>In the first place, it is not the family divorce cloud +that has been darkening Susie’s soul. She let the +cat out of the bag, on the way home this afternoon. +Susie has been in love with a man who didn’t come up +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222' name='page_222'></a>222</span> +to expectations. She was very much in love, apparently, +and disregarded what people said about him. +Then, much to her surprise, her Uncle Peter took a +hand in the game. It must have been rather a violent +hand, for a person so habitually placid. But Peter, +apparently, wasn’t altogether ignorant of the club-talk +about the young rake in question. At any rate, +he decided it was about time to act. Susie declined +to explain in just what way he acted. Yet she +admits now that Peter was entirely in the right and +she, for a time, was entirely in the wrong. But it is +rather like having one’s appendix cut out, she protests, +without an anesthetic. It takes time to heal +such wounds. Susie obviously was bowled over. She +is still suffering from shock. But I like the spirit of +the girl. She’s not the kind that one disappointment +is going to kill. And prairie life is already doing her +good. For she announced this morning that her +clothes were positively getting tight for her. And +such clothes they are! Such delicate silks and cobwebs +of lace and pale-pink contraptions of satin! +Such neatly tailored skirts and short-vamped shoes +and thing-a-ma-jigs of Irish linen and platinum and +gold trinkets to deck out her contemptuous little +body with. For Susie takes them all with a shrug +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223' name='page_223'></a>223</span> +of indifference. She loves to slip on my oil-stained +old hunting-jacket and my weather-beaten old golf-boots +and go meandering about the range.</p> +<p>Another revision which I am compelled to make is +that while I expected to be the means of cheering +Susie up, Susie has quite unconsciously been the +means of rejuvenating <i>me</i>. I think I’ve been able to +catch at least a hollow echo of her youth from her. +I <i>know</i> I have. Two days ago, when we motored in +to Buckhorn with my precious marketing of butter +and eggs—and Susie never before quite realized how +butter and eggs reached the ultimate consumer—a +visiting Odd-Fellows’ band was playing a two-step +on the balcony of the Commercial Hotel. Susie and +I stopped the car, and while Struthers stared at us +aghast from the back seat, we two-stepped together +on the main street of Buckhorn. We just let the +music go to our heads and danced there until the +crowd in front of the band began to right-about-face +and a cowboy in chaps brazenly announced that he +was Susie’s next partner. So we danced to our running-board, +stepped into our devil-wagon, and headed +for home, in the icy aura of Struthers’ sustained indignation.</p> +<p>I begin to get terribly tired of propriety. I don’t +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224' name='page_224'></a>224</span> +know whether it’s Struthers, or Struthers and Gershom +combined, or having to watch one’s step so when +there are children about one. But I’m tired of being +respectable. I’m tired of holding myself in. I warn +the world that I’m about ready for anything, anything +from horse-stealing to putting a dummy-lady +in Whinstane Sandy’s bed. I don’t believe there’s +any wickedness that’s beyond me. I’m a reckless and +abandoned woman. And if that cold-blooded old +Covenanter doesn’t get home from Calgary pretty +soon I’m going buckboard riding with Bud Teetzel!</p> +<p>I’ve been asking Susie if we measure up to her +expectations. She said, in reply, that we fitted in to +a T. For her Uncle Peter, she acknowledged, had +already done us in oils on the canvas of her curiosity. +She accused me, however, of reveling in that primitiveness +which is the last resort of the sophisticated—like +the log cabins the city folk fashion for themselves +when they get up in the Adirondacks. And Casa +Grande, she further amended, impressed her as being +almost disappointingly comfortable.</p> +<p>After that Susie fell to talking about Peter. She +is affectionately contemptuous toward her uncle, protesting +that he’s forever throwing away his chances +and letting other people impose on his good nature. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225' name='page_225'></a>225</span> +It was lucky, averred Susie, that he was born with a +silver spoon in his mouth. For he was a hopeless +espouser of Lost Causes. She inclined to the belief +that he should have married young, should have married +young and had a flock of children, for he was +crazy about kiddies.</p> +<p>I asked Susie what sort of wife Peter should have +chosen. And Susie said Peter should have hitched up +with a good, capable, practical-minded woman who +could manage him without letting him know he was +being managed. There was a widow in the East, +acknowledged his niece, who had been angling for +poor Peter for years. And Peter was still free, +Susie suspected, because in the presence of that +widow he emulated Hamlet and always put an antic +disposition on. Did the most absurd things, and appeared +to be little more than half-witted. The widow +in question had even spoken to Susie about her uncle’s +eccentricities and intimated that his segregative manner +of life might in the end affect his intellect!</p> +<p>The thought of Peter marrying rather gave me a +shock. It was like being told by some authority in +astronomy that your earth was about to collide with +Wernecke’s Comet. And, vain peacock that I was, I +rather liked to think of Peter going through life +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226' name='page_226'></a>226</span> +mourning for me, alone and melancholy and misogynistic +for the rest of his days! Yet there must be +dozens, there must be hundreds, of attractive girls +along the paths which he travels. I found the courage +to mention this fact to Susie, who merely laughed +and said her Uncle Peter would probably be saved by +his homeliness. But I can’t say that I ever regarded +Peter Ketley as homely. He may never carry off a +blue ribbon from a beauty show, but he has the sort +of face that a woman of sense can find tremendous +appeal in. Your flapper type, I suppose, will always +succumb to the curled Romeo, but it’s the ruggeder +and stronger man with the bright mind and the +kindly heart who will always appeal to the clearer-eyed +woman who has come to know life.... Susie +has told me, by the way, that Josie Langdon and her +husband quarreled on their honeymoon, quarreled +the first week in Paris and right across the Continent +for the momentous reason that Josie <i>insisted on putting +sugar in her claret</i>!</p> +<p>I’ve been doing a good deal of thinking, the last +few hours. I’ve been wondering if I’m a Lost Cause. +And I’ve been wondering why women should want to +put sugar in their claret. If it’s made to be bitter, +why not accept the bitterness, and let it go at that?</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227' name='page_227'></a>227</span> +<a name='FRIDAY_THE_TWELFTH' id='FRIDAY_THE_TWELFTH'></a> +<h2><i>Friday the Twelfth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Dinky-Dunk has just sent word that he will be +home to-morrow night and asks if I’ll mind motoring +in to Buckhorn for him.</p> +<p>It impresses me as a non-committal little message, +yet it means more to me than I imagined. <i>My husband +is coming home.</i></p> +<p>Susie has been eying me all afternoon, with a +pucker of perplexity about her lapis-lazuli eyes. We +are busy, getting things to rights. And I’ve made an +appallingly long list of what I must buy in Buckhorn +to-morrow. Even Struthers has perked up a bit, and +is making furtive preparations for a sage-tea wash in +the morning.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228' name='page_228'></a>228</span> +<a name='TUESDAY_THE_SIXTEENTH' id='TUESDAY_THE_SIXTEENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Tuesday the Sixteenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Why is life so tangled up? Why can’t we be either +completely happy or completely the other way? +Why must wretchedness come sandwiched in between +slices of hope and contentment, and why must happiness +be haunted by some ghostly echo of pain? +And why can’t people be all good or all bad, so that +the tares and the wheat never get mixed up together +and make a dismal mess of our harvest of Expectation?</p> +<p>These are some of the questions I’ve been asking +myself since Duncan went back to Calgary last night. +He stayed only two days. And they were days of +terribly complicated emotions. I went to the station +for him, on Saturday, and in my impatience to be +there on time found myself with an hour and a half +of waiting, an hour and a half of wandering up and +down that ugly open platform in the clear cool light +of evening. There was a hint of winter in the air, an +intimidating northern nip which made the thought +of a warm home and an open fire a consolation to the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229' name='page_229'></a>229</span> +chilled heart. And I felt depressed, in spite of everything +I could do to bolster up my courage. In the +first place, I couldn’t keep from thinking of Alsina +Teeswater. And in the second place, never, never on +the prairie, have I watched a railway-train come in +or a railway-train pass away without feeling lonesome. +It reminds me how big is the outside world, +how infinitesimal is Chaddie McKail and her unremembered +existence up here a thousand miles from +Nowhere! It humbles me. It reminds me that I have +in some way failed to mesh in with the bigger machinery +of life.</p> +<p>I had a lump in my throat, by the time Dinky-Dunk’s +train pulled in and I saw him swing down +from the car-steps. I made for him through the +crowd, in fact, with my all but forgotten Australian +crawl-stroke, and accosted him with rather a briny +kiss and so tight a hug that he stood back and studied +my face. He wanted to ask, I know, if anything +had happened. He was obviously startled, and just +a trifle embarrassed. My lump, by this time, was +bigger than ever, but I had to swallow it in secret. +Dinky-Dunk, I found, was changed in many ways. +He was tired, and he seemed older. But he was prosperous-looking, +in brand-new raiment, and reported +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230' name='page_230'></a>230</span> +that luck was still with him and everything was flourishing. +Give him one year, he protested, and he’d +show them he wasn’t a piker.</p> +<p>I waited for him to ask about the children, but his +mind seemed full of his Barcona coal business. The +railway was learning to treat them half decently and +the coal was coming out better than they’d hoped for. +They’d a franchise to light the town, developing +their power from the mine screenings, and what they +got from this would be so much velvet. And he had a +chance to take over one of the finest houses in Mount +Royal, if he had a family along with him to excuse +such magnificence.</p> +<p>That final speech of his brought me up short. It +was dark along the trail, and dark in my heart. And +more things than one had happened that day to +humble me. So I took one hand off the wheel and put +it on his knee.</p> +<p>“Do you want me to go to Calgary?” I asked him.</p> +<p>“That’s up to you,” he said, without budging an +inch. He said it, in fact, with a steel-cold finality +which sent my soul cringing back into its kennel. +And the trail ahead of me seemed blacker than ever.</p> +<p>“I’ll have to have time to think it over,” I said with +a composure which was nine-tenths pretense. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231' name='page_231'></a>231</span></p> +<p>“Some wives,” he remarked, “are willing to help +their husbands.”</p> +<p>“I know it, Dinky-Dunk,” I acknowledged, hoping +against hope he’d give me the opening I was looking +for. “And I want to help, if you’ll only let me.”</p> +<p>“I think I’m doing my part,” he rather solemnly +asserted. I couldn’t see his face, in the dark, but +there was little hope to be wrung from the tone of +his voice. So I knew it would be best to hold my +peace.</p> +<p>Casa Grande blazed a welcome to us, as we drove +up to it, and the children, thank heaven, were relievingly +boisterous over the adventure of their dad’s +return. He seemed genuinely amazed at their growth, +seemed slightly irritated at Dinkie’s long stares of +appraisal, and feigned an interest in the paraded new +possessions of Poppsy and her brother—until it +came to Peter’s toy air-ship, which was thrust almost +bruskly aside.</p> +<p>And that reminds me of one thing which I am reluctant +to acknowledge. Dinky-Dunk was anything +but nice to Susie. He may have his perverse reasons +for disliking everything in any way connected with +Peter Ketley, but I at least expected my husband to +be agreeable to the casual guest under his roof. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232' name='page_232'></a>232</span> +Through it all, I must confess, Susie was wonderful. +She made no effort to ignore Duncan, as his ignoring +of her only too plainly merited. She remained, not +only poised and imperturbable, but impersonal and +impenetrable. She found herself, I think, driven +just a tiny bit closer to Gershom, who still shows a +placid exterior to Duncan’s slightly contemptuous +indifference.</p> +<p>My husband, I’m afraid, was not altogether happy +in his own home. In one way, of course, I can not +altogether blame him for that, since his bigger interests +now are outside that home. But I begin to see +how dangerous these long separations can be. Somewhere +and at some time, before too much water runs +under the bridges, there will have to be a readjustment.</p> +<p>I realized that, in fact, as I drove Duncan back to +the station last night, after I’d duly signed the different +papers he’d brought for that purpose. I had +a feeling that every chug of the motor was carrying +him further and further out of my life. Heaven +knows, I was willing enough to eat crow. I was ready +to bury the hatchet, and bury it in my own bosom, +if need be, rather than see it swinging free to strike +some deeper blow. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233' name='page_233'></a>233</span></p> +<p>“Dinky-Dunk,” I said after a particularly long +silence between us, “what is it you want me to do?”</p> +<p>My heart was beating much faster than he could +have imagined and I was grateful for the chance to +pretend the road was taking up most of my attention.</p> +<p>“Do about what?” he none too encouragingly inquired.</p> +<p>“We don’t seem to be hitting it off the way we +should be,” I went on, speaking as quietly as I was +able. “And I want you to tell me where I’m failing to +do my share.”</p> +<p>That note of humility from me must have surprised +him a little, for we rode quite a distance without +a word.</p> +<p>“What makes you feel that way?” he finally asked.</p> +<p>I found it hard to answer that question. It would +never be easy, at any rate, to answer it as I wanted to.</p> +<p>“Because things can’t go on this way forever,” I +found the courage to tell him.</p> +<p>“Why not?” he asked. He seemed indifferent +again.</p> +<p>“Because they’re all wrong,” I rather tremulously +replied. “Can’t you see they’re all wrong?”</p> +<p>“But why do you want them changed?” he asked +with a disheartening sort of impersonality. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234' name='page_234'></a>234</span></p> +<p>“For the sake of the children,” I told him. And +I could feel the impatient movement of his body on the +car seat beside me.</p> +<p>“The children!” he repeated with acid-drop deliberation. +“The children, of course! It’s always the +children!”</p> +<p>“You’re still their father,” I reminded him.</p> +<p>“A sort of honorary president of the family,” he +amended.</p> +<p>Hope ebbed out of my heart, like air out of a +punctured tire.</p> +<p>“Aren’t you making it rather hard for me?” I +demanded, trying to hold myself in, but feeling the +bob-cat getting the better of the purring tabby.</p> +<p>“I’ve rather concluded that was the way you made +it for <i>me</i>,” countered Duncan, with a coolness of manner +which I came more and more to resent.</p> +<p>“In what way?” I asked.</p> +<p>“In shutting up shop,” he rather listlessly responded.</p> +<p>“I don’t think I quite understand,” I told him.</p> +<p>“Well, in crowbarring me out of your scheme of +life, if you insist on knowing,” were the words that +came from the husband sitting so close beside me. +“You had your other interests, of course. But you +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_235' name='page_235'></a>235</span> +also seem to have had the idea that you could turn me +loose like a range horse. I could paw for my fodder +and eat snow when I got thirsty. You didn’t even +care to give me a wind-break to keep a forty-mile +blizzard out of my bones. You didn’t know where I +was browsing, and didn’t much care. It was up to +me to rustle for myself and be rounded up when the +winter was over and there was another spell of work +on hand!”</p> +<p>We rode on in silence, for almost a mile, with the +cold air beating against my body and a colder numbness +creeping about the corner of my heart.</p> +<p>“Do you mean, Dinky-Dunk,” I finally asked, +“that you want your freedom?”</p> +<p>“I’m not saying that,” he said, after another short +silence.</p> +<p>“Then what is it you want?” I asked, wondering +why the windshield should look so blurred in the +half-light.</p> +<p>“I want to get something out of life,” was his embittered +retort.</p> +<p>It was a retort that I thought over, thought over +with an oddly settling mind, like a stirred pool that +has been left to clear itself. For that grown man +sitting there beside me seemed ridiculously like a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236' name='page_236'></a>236</span> +spoiled child, an indulged child forlornly alone in the +fogs of his own arrogance. He made me think of a +black bear which bites at the bullet wound in his own +body. I felt suddenly sorry for him, in a maternal +sort of way. I felt sorry for him at the same time +that I remained a trifle afraid of him, for he still possessed, +I knew, his black-bear power of inflicting unlooked-for +and ursine blows. I simply ached to swing +about on him and say: “Dinky-Dunk, what you need +is a good spanking!” But I didn’t have the courage. +I had to keep my sense of humor under cover, just as +you have to blanket garden-geraniums before the +threat of a black frost. Yet, oddly enough, I felt +fortified by that sense of pity. It seemed to bring +with it the impression that Duncan was still a small +boy who might some day grow out of his badness. It +made me feel suddenly older and wiser than this overgrown +child who was still crying for the moon. And +with that feeling came a wave of tolerance, followed +by a smaller wave of faith, of faith that everything +might yet come out right, if only I could learn to be +patient, as mothers are patient with children.</p> +<p>“And I, on my part, Dinky-Dunk, want to see you +get the very best out of life,” I found myself saying +to him. My intentions were good, but I suppose I +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237' name='page_237'></a>237</span> +made my speech in a very superior and school-teachery +sort of way.</p> +<p>“I guess I’ve got about all that’s coming to me,” +he retorted, with the note of bitterness still in his +voice.</p> +<p>And again I had the feeling of sitting mother-wise +and mother-patient beside an unruly small boy.</p> +<p>“There’s much more, Dinky-Dunk, if you only ask +for it,” I said as gently as I was able.</p> +<p>He turned, at that, and studied me in the failing +light, studied me with a sharp look of interrogation +on his face. I had the feeling, as he did so, of something +epochal in the air, as though the drama of life +were narrowing up to its climactic last moment. Yet +I felt helpless to direct the course of that drama. +I nursed the impression that we stood at the parting +of the ways, that we stood hesitating at the fork of +two long and lonely trails which struck off across an +illimitable world, farther and farther apart. I +vaguely regretted that we were already in the streets +of Buckhorn, for I was half hoping that Duncan +would tell me to stop the car. Then I vaguely regretted +that I was busy driving that car, as otherwise +I might have been free to get my arms about that +granitic Dour Man of mine and strangle him into +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238' name='page_238'></a>238</span> +submitting to that momentary mood of softness +which seems to come less and less to the male as he +grows older.</p> +<p>But Duncan merely laughed, a bit uneasily, and +just as suddenly grew silent again. I had a sense of +asbestos curtains coming down between us, coming +down before the climax was reached or the drama +was ended. I couldn’t help wondering, as we drove +into the cindered station-yard where the lights were +already twinkling, if Dinky-Dunk, like myself, sat +waiting for something which failed to manifest itself, +if he too had held back before the promise of some +decisive word which I was without the power to utter. +For we were only half-warm, the two of us, toying +with the ghosts of the dead past and childishly afraid +of the future. We were Laodiceans, neither hot nor +cold, without the primal hunger to reach out and +possess what we too timidly desired. We were more +neutral even than Ferdinand and the Lady of the +Bust, for we no longer cared sufficiently to let the +other know we cared, but waited and waited in that +twilight where all cats are gray.</p> +<p>There was, mercifully, very little time left for us +before the train came in. We kept our masks on, and +talked only of every-day things, about the receipt +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239' name='page_239'></a>239</span> +for the ranch taxes and what steers Whinnie should +“finish” and the new granary roof and the fire-lines +about the haystacks. Without quite knowing it, +when the train pulled in, I put my arm through my +husband’s—and for the second time that evening he +turned sharply and inspected my face. I felt as +though I wanted to hold him back, to hold him back +from something unescapable but tragically momentous. +I think he felt sorry for me. At any rate, +after he had swung his suit-case up on the car-platform, +he turned and kissed me good-by. But it was +the sort of kiss one gets at funerals. It left me +standing there watching the tail-lights blink off down +the track, as desolate as though I had been left alone +on the deadest promontory of the deadest planet +lost in space. I stood there until the lights were +gone. I stood there until the platform was empty +again and my car was the only car left along the +hard-packed cinders. So I climbed into the driving-seat, +and pulled on my gauntlets, and headed for +home....</p> +<p>Back at Casa Grande I found Dinkie and Whinnie +beside the bunk-house stove, struggling companionably +through the opening chapters of <i>Treasure +Island</i>. My boy smiled up at me, for a moment, but +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240' name='page_240'></a>240</span> +his mind, I could see, was intent on the page along +which Whinnie’s stubbled finger was crawling like a +plowshare beside each furrow of text. He was in +the South Pacific, a thousand miles away from me. +In my own house Struthers was putting a petulant-voiced +Poppsy to bed, and Gershom, up in his room, +was making extraordinary smells at his chemistry +experiments. Susie I found curled comfortably up in +front of the fire, idling over my first volume of <i>Jean +Christophe</i>.</p> +<p>She read three sentences aloud as I sat down beside +her. “How happy he is! He is made to be happy!...Life +will soon see to it that he is brought to +reason.”</p> +<p>She seemed to expect some comment from me, but +I found myself with nothing to say. In fact, we both +sat there for a long time, staring in silence at the +fire.</p> +<p>“Why do you live with a man you don’t love?” she +suddenly asked out of the utter stillness.</p> +<p>It startled me, that question. It also embarrassed +me, for I could feel my color mount as Susie’s lapis-lazuli +eyes rested on my face.</p> +<p>“What makes you think I don’t love him?” I +countered, reminding myself that Susie, after all, +was still a girl in her teens. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241' name='page_241'></a>241</span></p> +<p>“It’s not a matter of thinking,” was Susie’s quiet +retort. “I <i>know</i> you don’t.”</p> +<p>“Then I wish I could be equally certain,” I said +with a defensive stiffening of the lines of dignity.</p> +<p>But Susie smiled rather wearily at my forlorn little +parade of <i>hauteur</i>. Then she looked at the fire.</p> +<p>“It’s hell, isn’t it, being a woman?” she finally +observed, unconsciously paraphrasing a much older +philosopher.</p> +<p>“Sometimes,” I admitted.</p> +<p>“I don’t see why you stand it,” was her next meditative +shaft in my direction.</p> +<p>“What would you do about it?” I guardedly inquired.</p> +<p>Susie’s face took on one of its intent looks. She +was only in her teens, but life, after all, hadn’t dealt +over-lightly with her. She impressed me, at the +moment, as a secretly ardent young person whose +hard-glazed little body might be a crucible of incandescent +though invisible emotions.</p> +<p>“What would you do about it?” I repeated, wondering +what gave some persons the royal right of +doing the questionable and making it seem unquestionable.</p> +<p>“<i>Live!</i>” said Susie with quite unlooked-for emphasis. +“<i>Live</i>—whatever it costs!” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242' name='page_242'></a>242</span></p> +<p>“Wouldn’t you regard this as living?” I asked, +after a moment of thought.</p> +<p>“Not as you ought to be,” averred Susie.</p> +<p>“Why not?” I parried.</p> +<p>Susie sighed. She began to see that it was beyond +argument, I suppose. Then she too had her period +of silence.</p> +<p>“But what are you getting out of it?” she finally +demanded. “What is going to happen? What ever +<i>has</i> happened?”</p> +<p>“To whom?” I asked, resenting the unconscious +cruelty of her questioning.</p> +<p>“To you,” was the reply of the hard-glazed young +hedonist confronting me.</p> +<p>“Are you flattering me with the inference that I +was cut out for better things?” I interrogated as my +gaze met Susie’s. It was her turn to color up a bit. +Then she sighed again, and shook her head.</p> +<p>“I don’t suppose it’s doing either of us one earthly +bit of good,” she said with a listless small smile of +atonement. “And I’m sorry.”</p> +<p>So we let the skeletons stalk away from our pleasant +fireside and secrete themselves in their customary +closets of silence.</p> +<p>But I’ve been thinking a good deal about that +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243' name='page_243'></a>243</span> +question of Susie’s. What <i>has</i> happened to me, out +here on the prairie? What has indeed come into my +life?...</p> +<p>I married young and put a stop to those romantic +adventurings which enrich the lives of most girls and +enlighten the days of many women. I married a man +and lived with him in a prairie shack, and sewed and +baked for him, and built a new home and lost it, and +began over again. I had children, and saw one of +them die, and felt my girlhood slip away, and sold +butter and eggs, and loved the man of my choice and +cleaved to him and planned for my children, until I +saw the man of my choice love another woman. And +still I clung to my sparless hulk of a home, hoping +to hold close about me the children I had brought into +the world and would some day lose again to the +world. And that was all. That was everything. It +is true, nothing much has ever happened to me....</p> +<p>But I stop, to think this over. If these are the +small things, then what are the big things of life? +What is it that other women get? I have sung and +been happy; I have known great joy and walked big +with Hope. I have loved and been loved. I have +known sorrow, and I have known birth, and I have sat +face to face with death. I have, after all, pretty well +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244' name='page_244'></a>244</span> +run the whole gamut, without perhaps realizing it. +For these, after all, are the big things, the elemental +things, of life. They are the basic things which leave +scant room for the momentary fripperies and the +hand-made ornaments of existence....</p> +<p>Heigho! I seem to grow into a melancholy +Jacques with the advancing years. That’s the way of +life, I suppose. But I’ve no intention of throwing +up the sponge. If I can no longer get as much fun +out of the game as I want, I can at least watch my +offspring taking their joy out of it. God be thanked +for giving us our children! We can still rest our +tired old eyes on them, just as the polisher of precious +stones used to keep an emerald in front of him, to +relieve his strained vision by gazing at its soft and +soothing greenness.</p> +<p>I have just crept in to take a look at my precious +Dinkie, fast asleep in the old cast-iron crib that is +growing so small for him he has to lie catercornered +on his mattress. He seemed so big, stretched out +there, that he frightened me with the thought he +couldn’t be a child much longer. There are no babies +left now in my home circle. And I still have a shamefaced +sort of hankering to hold a baby in my arms +again!</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245' name='page_245'></a>245</span> +<a name='WEDNESDAY_THE_THIRTYFIRST' id='WEDNESDAY_THE_THIRTYFIRST'></a> +<h2><i>Wednesday the Thirty-First</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Susie has promised to stay with us until after +Christmas. And the holidays, I realize, are only +a few weeks away. Struthers is knitting a sweater +of flaming red and rather grimly acknowledged, +when I pinned her down, that it was for Whinstane +Sandy. There was a snow-flurry Sunday, and +Gershom took Susie riding in the old cutter, scratching +grittily along the half-covered trails but apparently +enjoying it. My poor little Poppsy, who +rather idolizes Gershom, is transparently jealous of +his attentions to Susie. Yet Gershom, I know, is +nice to Susie and nothing more. He is still my loyal +but carefully restrained knight. It’s a shame, I suppose, +to bobweasel him the way I occasionally do. +But I can’t quite help it. His goody-goodiness is as +provocative to my baser nature as a red flag to an +Andulasian bull. And a woman who was once reckoned +as a heart-breaker has to keep her hand in with +<i>something</i>. I’ve got to convince myself that the last +shot hasn’t gone from the locker which Duncan +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246' name='page_246'></a>246</span> +Argyll McKail once rifled. I spoiled Gershom’s supper +for him the other night by asking what it was +made some people have such a mysterious influence +over other people. And I caught him up short, last +Sunday morning, when he tried to argue that I was +a sort of paragon in petticoats.</p> +<p>“Don’t you run away with the idea I’m that kind +of an angel,” I promptly assured him. “I’m an outlaw, +from saddle to sougan, and I can buck like a +bear fightin’ bees. I’m a she-devil crow-hopping +around in skirts. And I could bu’st every commandment +slap-bang across my knee, once I got started, +and leave a trail of crime across the fair face of +nature that would make an old Bow-Gun vaquero’s +back-hair stand up. I’m just a woman, Gershom, a +little lonely and a little loony, and there’s so much +backed-up bad in me that once the dam gives way +there’ll be a hell-roaring old whoop-up along these +dusty old trails!”</p> +<p>Gershom turned white.</p> +<p>“But there’s your little ones to think of,” he +quaveringly reminded me.</p> +<p>“Yes, there’s my little ones to think of,” I echoed, +wondering where I’d heard that familiar old refrain +before. My bark, after all, is much worse than my +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247' name='page_247'></a>247</span> +bite. About all I can do is take things out in talk. +I’m only a faded beauty, brooding over my antique +adventures as a heart-breaker. But I know of one +heart I’d still like to break—if I had the power. No; +not break; but bend up to the cracking point!</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248' name='page_248'></a>248</span> +<a name='MONDAY_THE_NINETEENTH' id='MONDAY_THE_NINETEENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Monday the Nineteenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>How Time takes wing for the busy! It’s only six +days to Christmas and I’ve still my box to get off +for Olga and her children. We’ve sent to Peter some +really charming snap-shots of the children, which +Susie took. The general effect of one, I must +acknowledge, is seriously damaged by the presence +of their Mummy.</p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk doubts if he’ll be able to get home for +the holidays. But I sent him a box, on Saturday, +made up of those things which he likes best to eat +and a set of the children’s pictures, nicely mounted. +I’ve also had Dinkie and Poppsy write a long letter +to their dad, a task which they performed with more +constraint than I had anticipated. I had my own +difficulties, along the same line, for I had taken a +photograph of poor little Pee-Wee’s grave with a +snow-drift across one end of it, and had written on +the bottom of the mounting-card: “<i>We must remember.</i>” +But as I stood studying this, before putting +it in next to Poppsy’s huge Christmas-card gay with +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249' name='page_249'></a>249</span> +powdered mica I felt a foolish tear or two run down +my cheek. And I realized it would never do to cloud +my Dinky-Dunk’s day with memories which might not +be altogether happy. So I’ve kept the picture of the +little white-fenced bed with the white snow-drift across +its foot....</p> +<p>Susie is in bed with a bad cold, which she caught +studying astronomy with Gershom. Poppsy was not +in the least put out when she watched me preparing +a mustard-plaster for the invalid. My daughter, I +am persuaded, has a revived faith in the operation of +retributive justice. But I hope Susie is better by +the holiday. Whinnie has the Christmas Tree hidden +away in the stable, and already a number of mysterious +parcels have arrived at Casa Grande. Bud +Teetzel very gallantly sent me over a huge turkey, an +eighteen-pounder, and to-morrow I have to go into +Buckhorn for my mail-order shipments. We have +decorated the house with a whole box of holly from +Victoria and I’ve hung a sprig of mistletoe in the +living-room doorway. The children, of course, are +on tiptoe with expectation. But I can’t escape the +impression that I’m merely acting a part, that I’m a +Pagliacci in petticoats. Heaven knows I clown +enough; no one can accuse me of not going through +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250' name='page_250'></a>250</span> +the gestures. But it seems like fox-trotting along +the deck of a sinking ship.</p> +<p>I stood under the mistletoe, this morning, and +dared Gershom to kiss me. He turned quite white +and made for the door. But I caught him by the +coat, like Potiphar’s wife, and pulled him back to the +authorizing berry-sprig and gave him a brazen big +smack on the cheek-bone. He turned a sunset pink, +at that, and marched out of the room without saying +a word. But he was shaking his head as he went, at +my shamelessness, I suppose. Poor old Gershom! +I wish there were more men in the world like him. +The other day Susie intimated that he was too homosexual +and that it was the polygamous wretches who +really kept the world going. But I refuse to subscribe +to that sophomoric philosophy of hers which +would divide the race into fools and knaves. “It’s +safer being sane than mad; it’s better being good +than bad!” as Robert remarked. And I know at least +one strong man who is not bad; and one bad man who +is not strong.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251' name='page_251'></a>251</span> +<a name='TUESDAY_THE_TWENTYSEVENTH' id='TUESDAY_THE_TWENTYSEVENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Tuesday the Twenty-Seventh</i></h2> +</div> +<p>The great Day has come and gone. And I’m not +sorry. There was a cloud over my heart that kept +me from getting the happiness out of it I ought. I +hoped we would hear from Peter, but for the first +time in history he overlooked us.</p> +<p>Dinky-Dunk, as he had warned us, could not get +home for the holidays. But he surprised me by sending +a really wonderful box for the kiddies, and even +a gorgeous silver-mounted collar for Scotty. Susie +is up again, but she is still feeling a bit listless. I +heard Gershom informing her to-night that her blood +travels at the rate of seven miles per hour and that if +all the energy of Niagara Falls were utilized it could +supply the world with seven million horse-power. I +do wish Gershom would get over trying to pat the +world on the head, instead of shaking hands with it! +I’m afraid I’m losing my lilt. I can’t understand +why I should keep feeling as blue as indigo. I am +a well of acid and a little sister to the crab-apple. I +think I’ll make Susie come down so we can humanize +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252' name='page_252'></a>252</span> +ourselves with a little music. For I feel like a Marie +Bashkirtseff with a bilious attack....</p> +<p>Whinstane Sandy has just come in with Peter’s +box, two days late. I felt sure that Peter would not +utterly forget us. There is still a great deal of +shouting down in the kitchen, where that most miraculous +of boxes has been unpacked. As for myself, +I’ve had a hankering to be alone, to think things over. +But my meditations don’t seem to get me anywhere.... +Dinkie has just come up to show me his brand-new +bridle for Buntie. It is a magnificent bridle, as +shiny and jingly as any lad could desire. I tried to +get him to put it down, so that I could draw him over +close to me and talk to him. But Dinkie is too excited +for any such demonstration. He’s beginning, I’m +afraid, to consider emotion a bit unmanly. He seems +to be losing his craving to be petted and pampered. +There are times, I can see, when he desires his fence-lines +to be respected.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253' name='page_253'></a>253</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_TWENTYNINTH' id='SUNDAY_THE_TWENTYNINTH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Twenty-Ninth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Nearly six weeks, I notice, have slipped by. For +a month and a half, apparently, the impulse to air +my troubles went hibernating with the bears. Yet it +has been a mild winter, so far, with very little snow +and a great deal of sunshine—a great deal of sunshine +which doesn’t elate me as it ought. I can’t +remember who it was said a happy people has no history. +But that’s not true of a happy woman. It’s +when her heart is full that she makes herself heard, +that she sings like a lark to the world. When she’s +wretched, she retires with her grief....</p> +<p>I haven’t been altogether wretched, it’s true, just +as I haven’t been altogether hilarious, but it disturbs +me to find that for a month and a half I haven’t +written a line in this, the mottled old book of my life. +It’s not that the last month or two has been empty, +for no months are really empty. They have to be +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254' name='page_254'></a>254</span> +filled with something. But there are times, I suppose, +when lives lie fallow, the same as fields lie fallow, times +when the days drag like harrow-teeth across the perplexed +loam of our soul and nothing comes of it at +all. Not, I repeat, that I have been momentously +unhappy. It’s more that a sort of sterilizing indifferency +took possession of me and made the little ups +and downs of existence as unworthy of record as the +ups and downs of the waves on the deadest shores of +the Dead Sea. It’s not that I’m idle, and it’s not +that I’m old, and it’s not that there’s anything wrong +with this disappointingly healthy body of mine. But +I rather think I need a change of some kind. I even +envy Susie, who has ambled on to the Coast and is staying +with the Lougheeds in Victoria, playing golf and +picking winter roses and writing back about her trips +up Vancouver Island and her approaching journey +down into California.</p> +<p>“What do we know of the New World,” she parodied +in her last letter that came to me, “who only the +old East know?” Then she goes on to say: “I’m +just back from a West Coast trip on the roly-poly +<i>Maquinna</i> and if my thoughts go wobbly and my +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255' name='page_255'></a>255</span> +hand goes crooked it’s because my head is so prodigiously +full of</p> + +<div style='margin:2px auto; text-align:center;'> +<img alt='large-S image' src='images/illus-255.png' /> +</div> + +<p>and alas, also <i>Seasickness</i>, that I can’t think +straight!”</p> +<p>Susie’s soul, apparently, has had the dry-shampoo +it was in need of. But as for me, I’m like an old +horse-shoe with its calks worn off. The Master-Blacksmith +of Life should poke me deep into His fires +and fling me on His anvil and make me over!</p> +<p>I’ve been worrying about my Dinkie. It’s all so +trivial, in a way, and yet I can’t persuade myself it +isn’t also tragic. He told Susie, before she left, that +he was quite willing to go to bed a little earlier one +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256' name='page_256'></a>256</span> +night, because then “he could dream about Doreen.” +And I noticed, not long ago, that instead of taking +just <i>one</i> of our Newton Pippins to school with him, +he had formed the habit of taking <i>two</i>. On making +investigation, I discovered that this second apple +ultimately and invariably found its way into the +hands of Mistress Doreen O’Lone. And last week +Dinkie autocratically commanded Whinstane Sandy +to hitch Mudski up in the old cutter, to go sleigh-riding +with the lady of his favor to the Teetzels’ +taffy-pull. Dinkie’s mother was not consulted in the +matter—and that is the disturbing feature of it all. +I can’t help remembering what Duncan once said +about my boy growing out of my reach. If I ever +lost my Dinkie I would indeed be alone, terribly and +hopelessly alone.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257' name='page_257'></a>257</span> +<a name='WEDNESDAY_THE_EIGHTH' id='WEDNESDAY_THE_EIGHTH'></a> +<h2><i>Wednesday the Eighth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Dinkie, who has been disturbing me the last few +days by going about with an air of suppressed excitement, +brought my anxiety to a head yesterday by +staring into my face and then saying:</p> +<p>“Mummy, I’ve got a secret!”</p> +<p>“What secret?” I asked, doing my best to appear +indifferent.</p> +<p>But Dinkie was not to be trapped.</p> +<p>“It wouldn’t be a secret, if I told you,” he +sagaciously explained.</p> +<p>I studied my child with what was supposed to be +a reproving eye.</p> +<p>“You mean you can’t even tell your own Mummy?” +I demanded.</p> +<p>He shook his head, in solemn negation.</p> +<p>“But can you, some day?” I pursued.</p> +<p>He thought this over.</p> +<p>“Yes, some day,” he acknowledged, squeezing my +knee.</p> +<p>“How long will I have to wait?” I asked, wondering +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258' name='page_258'></a>258</span> +what could bring such a rhapsodic light into his +hazel-specked eye. I thought, of course, of Doreen +O’Lone. And I wished the O’Lones would follow in +the footsteps of so many other successful ranchers +and trek off to California. Then, as I sat studying +Dinkie, I countermanded that wish. For its fulfillment +would bring loneliness to the heart of my laddie—and +loneliness is hell! So, instead, I struggled as +best I could to banish all thought of the matter from +my mind. But it was only half a success. I remembered +that Gershom himself had been going about as +abstracted as an ant-eater and as gloomy as a crow, +during the last week; and I kept sniffing something +unpropitious up-wind. I even hoped that Dinkie +would return to the subject, as children with a secret +have the habit of doing. But he has been as tight-lipped +on the matter as his reticent old dad might +have been.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259' name='page_259'></a>259</span> +<a name='WEDNESDAY_THE_FIFTEENTH' id='WEDNESDAY_THE_FIFTEENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Wednesday the Fifteenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I got an altogether unlooked-for Valentine yesterday. +It was a brief but a significant letter from +Dinky-Dunk, telling me that he had “taken over” the +Goodhue house in Mount Royal and asking me if I +intended to be its mistress. He has bought the house, +apparently, completely furnished and is getting +ready to move into it the first week in March.</p> +<p>The whole thing has rather taken my breath away. +I don’t object to an ultimatum, but I do dislike to +have it come like a bolt from the blue. I have arrived +at my Rubicon, all right, and about everything that’s +left of my life, I suppose, will hang on my decision. I +don’t know whether to laugh or to cry, to be horrified +or hilarious. At one moment I have a tendency to +emulate Marguerite doing the Jewel-Song in <i>Faust</i>. +“This isn’t <i>me</i>! This isn’t <i>me</i>!” I keep protesting to +myself. But Marguerite, I know, would never be +so ungrammatical. And then I begin to foresee difficulties. +The mere thought of leaving Casa Grande +tears my heart. When we go away, as that wise man +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260' name='page_260'></a>260</span> +of Paris once said, we die a little. This will always +seem my home. I could never forsake it utterly. I +dread to forsake it for even a portion of each year. +I am a part of the prairie, now, and I could never +be entirely happy away from it. And to accept that +challenge—for however one may look at it, it remains +a challenge—and go to the new home in Calgary +would surely be another concession. And I have been +conceding, conceding, for the sake of my children. +How much more can I concede?</p> +<p>Yet, when all is said and done, I am one of a family. +I am not a free agent. I am chained to the oar +for life. When we link up with the race we have more +than the little ring of our own Ego to remember. It +is not, as Dinky-Dunk once pointed out to me, a good +thing to get “Indianized.” We have our community +obligations and they must be faced. The children, +undoubtedly, would have advantages in the city. And +to find my family reunited would be “<i>le désir de +paraître</i>.” But I can’t help remembering how much +there is to remember. I’m humbler now, it’s true, +than I once was. I no longer say “One side, please!” +to life, while life, like old Major Elmes on Murray +Hill, declines to vary its course for one small and +piping voice. Instead of getting gangway, I find, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261' name='page_261'></a>261</span> +I’m apt to get an obliterating thump on the spine. +Heaven knows, I want to do the right thing. But +the issue seems so hopelessly tangled. I have brooded +over it and I have even prayed over it. But it all +seems to come to nothing. I sometimes nurse a +ghostly sort of hope that it may be taken out of my +hands, that some power outside myself may intervene +to decide. For it impresses me as ominous that I +should be able to hesitate at such a time, when a +woman, for once in her life, should know her own +mind, should see her own fixed goal and fight her way +to it. I’ve been wondering if I haven’t ebbed away +into that half-warm impersonality which used to impress +me as the last stage in moral decay.</p> +<p>But I’m not the fishy type of woman. I know I’m +not. And I’m not a hard-head. I’ve always had a +horror of being hard, for fear my hardness might in +some way be passed on to my Dinkie. I want to keep +my boy kindly and considerate of others, and loyal +to the people who love him. But I balk at that word +“loyal.” For if I expect loyalty in my offspring I +surely must have it myself. And I stood up before a +minister of God, not so many years ago, and took an +oath to prove loyal to my husband, to cleave to him +in sickness and in health. I also took an oath to +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262' name='page_262'></a>262</span> +honor him. But he has made that part of the compact +almost impossible. And my children, if I go +back to him, will come under his influence. And I +can’t help questioning what that influence will be. +I have only one life to live. And I have a human +anxiety to get out of it all that is coming to me. I +even feel that it owes me something, that there are +certain arrears of happiness to be made up.... I +wish I had a woman, older and wiser than myself, to +talk things over with. I have had the impulse to +write to Peter, and tell him everything, and ask him +what I ought to do. But that doesn’t impress me as +being quite fair to Peter. And, oddly enough, it +doesn’t impress me as being quite fair to Dinky-Dunk. +So I’m going to wait a week or two and let +the cream of conviction rise on the pan of indecision. +There’s a tiny parliament of angels, in the inner +chambers of our heart, who talk these things over and +decide them while we sleep.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263' name='page_263'></a>263</span> +<a name='FRIDAY_THE_SEVENTEENTH' id='FRIDAY_THE_SEVENTEENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Friday the Seventeenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>We had to dig in, like bears, for two whole days +while the first real snow-storm of the winter raged +outside. But the skies have cleared, the wind has +gone, and the weather is crystal-clear again. Dinkie +and Poppsy, furred to the ears, are out on the drifts +learning to use the snow-shoes which Percy and Olga +sent down to them for Christmas. Dinkie has made +himself a spear by lashing his broken-bladed jack-knife +to the handle of my headless dutch-hoe and has +converted himself into a stealthy Iluit stalking a +polar bear in the form of poor old Scotty, who can’t +quite understand why he is being driven so relentlessly +from crevice to Arctic crevice. They have also +built an igloo, and indulged in what is apparently +marriage by capture, with the reluctant bride making +her repeated escape by floundering over drifts piled +even higher than the fence-tops. It makes me hanker +to get my own snow-shoes on my moccasined feet +again and go trafficking over that undulating white +world of snow, where barb-wire means no more than +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264' name='page_264'></a>264</span> +a line-fence in Noah’s Flood. No one could remain +morose, in weather like this. You must dress for it, +of course, since that arching blue sky has sword-blades +of cold sheathed in its velvety soft azure. But +it goes to your head, like wine, and you wonder what +makes you feel that life is so well worth living.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265' name='page_265'></a>265</span> +<a name='TUESDAY_THE_TWENTYFIRST' id='TUESDAY_THE_TWENTYFIRST'></a> +<h2><i>Tuesday, the Twenty-First</i></h2> +</div> +<p>The armistice continues. And I continue to sit on +my keg of powder and sing “<i>O Sole Mio</i>” to the +northern moon.</p> +<p>I have had Whinstane Sandy build a toboggan-slide +out of the old binder-shed, which has been pretty +well blown to pieces by last summer’s wind-storms. +He picked out the soundest of the two-by-fours and +made a framework which he boarded over with the +best of the weather-bleached old siding. For when +you haven’t the luxury of a hill on your landscape, +you can at least make an imitation one. Whinnie +even planed the board-joints in the center of the runway +and counter-sunk every nail-head—and cussed +volubly when he pounded his heavily mittened thumb +with the hammer. The finished structure could hardly +be called a thing of beauty. We have only one of the +stable-ladders to mount it from the rear, and instead +of toboggans we have only Poppsy’s home-made +hand-sleigh and Dinkie’s somewhat dilapidated “flexible +coaster.” But when water had been carried out +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266' name='page_266'></a>266</span> +to that smooth runway and the boards had been +coated with ice, like brazil-nuts <i>glacé</i>, and the snow +along the lower course had been well packed down, it +at least gave you a run for your money.</p> +<p>The tip-top point of the slide couldn’t have been +much more than fourteen or fifteen feet above the +prairie-floor, but it seemed perilous enough when I +tried it out—much to the perturbation of Whinstane +Sandy—by lying stomach-down on Dinkie’s coaster +and letting myself shoot along that well-iced incline. +It was a kingly sensation, that of speed wedded to +danger, and it took me back to Davos at a breath. +Then I tried it with Dinkie, and then with Poppsy, +and then with Poppsy and Dinkie together. We had +some grand old tumbles, in the loose snow, and some +unmentionable bruises, before we became sufficiently +expert to tool our sleigh-runners along their proper +trail. But it was good fun. The excitement of the +thing, in fact, rather got into my blood. In half an +hour the three of us were covered with snow, were +shouting like Comanches, and were having an altogether +wild time of it. There was climbing enough +to keep us warm, for all the sub-zero weather, and I +was finally allowed to escape to the house only on the +promise that I risk my neck again on the morrow.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267' name='page_267'></a>267</span> +<a name='FRIDAY_THE_TWENTYFOURTH' id='FRIDAY_THE_TWENTYFOURTH'></a> +<h2><i>Friday the Twenty-Fourth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>My Dinkie’s secret is no longer a secret. It +divulged itself to me to-day with the suddenness of +a thunder-clap. <i>Peter Ketley has been back at +Alabama Ranch for nearly three weeks.</i></p> +<p>I was out with the kiddies this afternoon, having +another wild time on the toboggan-slide, dressed in an +old Mackinaw of Dinky-Dunk’s buckled in close +around my waist and a pair of Whinnie’s heaviest +woolen socks over my moccasins and a mangy old +gray-squirrel cap on by head. The children looked +like cherubs who’d been rolled in a flour-barrel, with +their eyes shining and their cheeks glowing like Richmond +roses, but I must have looked like something +that had been put out to frighten the coyotes away. +At any rate, there we were, all squealing like pigs and +all powdered from tip to toe with the dry snow and +all looking like Piutes on the war-path. And who +should walk calmly about the corner of the buildings +but Peter himself!</p> +<p>My heart stopped beating and I had to lean +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268' name='page_268'></a>268</span> +against the end of the toboggan-slide until I could +catch my breath.</p> +<p>He called out, “Hello, youngsters!” as quietly as +though he had seen us all the day before. I said +“Peter!” in a strangled sort of whisper, and wondered +what made my knees wabble as I stood staring +at him as though he had been a ghost.</p> +<p>But Peter was no ghost. He was there before me, +in the body, still smoking his foolish little pipe, wearing +the familiar old coonskin cap and coat that +looked as though the moths had made many a Roman +holiday of their generously deforested pelt. He took +the pipe out of his mouth as he stepped over to me, +and pulled off his heavy old gauntlet before he shook +hands.</p> +<p>“Peter!” I repeated in my ridiculous small whisper.</p> +<p>He didn’t speak. But he smiled, a bit wistfully, +as he stared down at me. And for just a moment, I +think, an odd look of longing came into his searching +honest eyes which studied my face as though he were +counting every freckle and line and eyelash there. +He continued to X-ray me with that hungry stare of +his until I took my hand away and could feel the +blood surging back to my face.</p> +<p>“It’s a long time,” he said as he puffed hard on his +pipe, apparently to keep it from going out. The +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269' name='page_269'></a>269</span> +sound of his voice sent a little thrill through my +body. I felt as rattle-headed as a rabbit, and was +glad when Dinkie and Poppsy captured him by each +knee and hung on like catamounts.</p> +<p>“Where did you come from?” I finally asked, trying +in vain to be as collected as Peter himself.</p> +<p>Then he told me. He told me as nonchalantly as +though he were giving me a piece of news of no particular +interest. He had rather a difficult book to +finish up, and he concluded the quietness of Alabama +Ranch would suit him to a T. And when spring came +he wanted to have a look about for a nest of the +whooping crane. It has been rather a rarity, for +some sixteen or seventeen years, this whooping crane, +and the American Museum was offering a mighty +handsome prize for a specimen. Then he was compelled +to give his attention to Dinkie and Poppsy, +and tried the slide a couple of times, and announced +that our coaster was better than the chariot of +Icarius. And by this time I had recovered my wits +and my composure and got some of the snow off my +Mackinaw.</p> +<p>“Have I changed?” I asked Peter as he turned to +study my face for the second time.</p> +<p>“To me,” he said as he brushed the snow from his +gauntlets, “you are always adorable!” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270' name='page_270'></a>270</span></p> +<p>“<i>Verboten!</i>” I retorted to that, wondering why +anything so foolish could have the power to make my +pulses sing.</p> +<p>“Why?” he asked, as his eyes met mine.</p> +<p>“For the same old reason,” I told him.</p> +<p>“Reasons,” he said, “are like shoes: Time has the +trick of wearing them out.”</p> +<p>“When that happens, we have to get new ones,” I +reminded him.</p> +<p>“Then what is the new one?” he asked, with an +unexpectedly solemn look on his face.</p> +<p>“My husband has just asked me to join him in +Calgary,” I said, releasing my bolt.</p> +<p>“Are you going to?” he asked, with his face a mask.</p> +<p>“I think I am,” I told him. For I could see, now, +how Peter’s return had simplified the situation by +complicating it. Already he had made my course +plainer to me. I could foresee what this new factor +would imply. I could understand what Peter’s presence +at Alabama Ranch would come to mean. And +I had to shut my eyes to the prospect. I was still +the same old single-track woman with a clear-cut duty +laid out before her. There were certain luxuries, for +the sake of my own soul’s peace, I could never afford.</p> +<p>“Why are you going back to your husband?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271' name='page_271'></a>271</span> +Peter was asking, with real perplexity on his face.</p> +<p>“Because he needs me,” I said as I stood watching +the children go racing down the slide.</p> +<p>“Why?” he asked, with what impressed me as his +first touch of harshness.</p> +<p>“Must I explain?” I inquired with my own first +movement in self-defense, for it had suddenly occurred +to me that any such explaining would be much +more difficult than I dreamed.</p> +<p>“Of course not,” said Peter, changing color a +little. “It’s only that I’m so tremendously anxious +to—to understand.”</p> +<p>“To understand what?” I questioned, both hoping +and dreading that he would go on to the bitter end.</p> +<p>“That <i>you</i> understand,” was his cryptic retort. +And for once in his life Peter disappointed me.</p> +<p>“I can’t afford to,” I said with an effort at lightness +which seemed to hurt him more than it ought. +Then I realized, as I stood looking up into his face, +that I was doing little to merit that humble and magnificent +loyalty of Peter’s. <i>He</i> would play fair to +the end. He was too big of heart to think first of +himself. It was <i>me</i> he was thinking of; it was <i>me</i> he +wanted to see happy. But I had my own road to go, +and no outsider could guide me. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272' name='page_272'></a>272</span></p> +<p>“It’s no use, Peter,” I said as I put my mittened +hand on his gauntleted arm without quite knowing +I was doing it. And I went on to warn him that he +must not confront me with kindness, that I was a +good deal like an Indian’s dog which neither looks for +kindness nor understands it. He laughed a trifle +bitterly at that and reminded me, as he stood staring +at me, of a Pribilof seal staring into an Arctic sun. +Then he said an odd thing. “I wish I could make it +a bit easier for you,” he remarked as impersonally as +though he were meditating aloud.</p> +<p>I asked him why he said that. He evasively explained +that he thought it was because I had what the +Romans called <i>constantia</i>. So I asked him to explain +<i>constantia</i>. And he said, with a shrug, that we might +regard it as firm consideration of a question before +acting on it. I explained, at that, that it wasn’t a +matter of choice, but of character. He was willing +to acknowledge that I was right. But before that +altogether unsatisfactory little debate was over Peter +made me promise him one thing. He has made me +promise that before I leave we have a tramp over the +prairie together. And we have agreed that Sunday +would be as good a day as any.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273' name='page_273'></a>273</span> +<a name='SATURDAY_THE_TWENTYFIFTH' id='SATURDAY_THE_TWENTYFIFTH'></a> +<h2><i>Saturday the Twenty-Fifth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I have sent word to Duncan to expect me in Calgary +as soon as I can get things ready. My decision +is made. And it is final. Two ghostly hands have +reached out and turned me toward my husband. One +is the Past. The other is the Proprieties. If life +out here were a little more like the diamond-dyed +Westerns, Peter Ketley and Duncan McKail would +fight with hammerless Colts, the victor would throw +me over the horn of his saddle, and vanish in a cloud +of dust, while Struthers was turning Casa Grande +into a faro-hall and my two kiddies were busy holding +up the Elk Crossing stage-coach.</p> +<p>But life, alas, isn’t so dramatic as we dream it. It +cross-hobbles us and hog-ties us and leaves us afraid +of our own wilted impulses. I have a terror of failure. +And it’s plain enough I have only one mission +on God’s green footstool. I’m a home-maker, and +nothing more. I’m a home-maker confronted by the +last chance to make good at my one and only calling. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274' name='page_274'></a>274</span> +And whatever it costs, I’m going to make my +husband recognize me as a patient and long-suffering +Penelope....</p> +<p>But enough of the rue! To-morrow I’m going +snow-shoeing with Peter. I’m praying that the +weather will be propitious. I want one of our sparkling-burgundy +days with the sun shining bright and +a nip in the air like a stiletto buried in rose leaves. +For it may be the last time in all my life I shall walk +on the prairie with my friend, Peter Ketley. The +page is going to be turned over, the candle snuffed +out, and the singing birds of my freedom silenced. +I have met my Rubicon, and it must be crossed. But +last night, for the first time in a month, I plastered +enough cold cream on my nose to make me look like a +buttered muffin, and rubbed enough almond-oil meal +on my arms to make them look like a miller’s. And +I’ve been asking myself if I’m the sedate old lady life +has been trying to make me. There are certain +Pacific Islands, Gershom tells me, where the climate +is so stable that the matter of weather is never even +mentioned, where the people who bathe in that eternal +calm are never conscious of the conditions surrounding +them. That’s the penalty, I suppose, that humanity +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275' name='page_275'></a>275</span> +pays for constancy. There are no lapses to record, +no deviations to be accounted for, no tempests to +send us tingling into the shelters of wonder. And I +can’t yet be quite sure whether this rebellious old +heart of mine wants to be a Pacific Islander or not.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276' name='page_276'></a>276</span> +<a name='MONDAY_THE_TWENTYSEVENTH' id='MONDAY_THE_TWENTYSEVENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Monday the Twenty-Seventh</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Peter and I have had our tramp in the snow. It +wasn’t a sunny day, as I had hoped. It was one of +those intensely cold northern days without wind or +sun, one of those misted days which Balzac somewhere +describes as a beautiful woman born blind. It was +fifty-three below zero when we left the house, with the +smoke going up in the gray air as straight and undisturbed +as a pine-tree and the drifts crunching like +dry charcoal under our snow-shoes. We were woolened +and mittened and capped and furred up to the +eyes, however, and I was warmer than I’ve been many +a time on Boston Common in March, even though +we did look like a couple of deep-sea divers and +steamed like fire-engines when we breathed.</p> +<p>We tramped until we were tired, swung back to +Casa Grande, and Peter came in for a cup of tea +and then trudged off to Alabama Ranch again. And +that was the lee and the long of it, as the Irish say. +What did we talk about? Heaven knows what we +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277' name='page_277'></a>277</span> +didn’t talk about! Peter told me about a rancher +named Bidwell, north of The Crossing, being found +frozen to death in a snow-drift, frozen stiff, with the +horse still standing and the rider still sitting upright +in the saddle. He said there was a lot of rot talked +about the great clean outdoors. The sentimentalists +found that they naturally felt a bit niftier in fresh +air, but the great outdoors, according to Peter, is an +arena of endless murder and rapine and warfare, and +the cleanest acre of forest or prairie under the sun +somewhere has its stains of blood and its record of +cruelty. We talked about Susie and the negative +phrasing of the ten moral laws and the Horned Dinosaur +from Sand Hill Creek (whose bones Peter reckoned +to be at least three million years old) and the +marriage customs of the Innuits. And we talked +about Matzenauer and Kreisler and the best cure for +chilblains and about Gershom and Poppsy and +Dinkie—but most of all about Dinkie.</p> +<p>Peter asked me if I’d seen Dinkie’s school essays +on <i>The Flag</i> and <i>The Capture of Quebec</i>, and rather +surprised me by handing over crumpled copies of the +same, Dinkie having proudly despatched these masterpieces +all the way to Philadelphia for his “Uncle +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278' name='page_278'></a>278</span> +Peter’s” approval. It hurt me, for just one foolish +fraction of a second, to think my boy had confidences +with an outsider which he could not have with his own +mother. And then I remembered that Peter wasn’t +an outsider. I realized how much he had brought +into my laddie’s life, how much, in a different way, he +had brought into my own. I even tried to tell him +about this. But he stopped me short by saying +something in Latin which he later explained meant +“by taking the middle course we shall not go amiss.” +So I came back to Casa Grande, not exactly with a +feeling of frustration, but with a feeling of possibilities +withheld and issues deferred. It was a companionable +enough tramp, I suppose. But I’m afraid +I was a disappointment to Peter. His gaiety impressed +me as a bit forced. I am slightly mystified +by his refusal, while taking serious things seriously, +to take anything tragically. Even at tea, with all +its air of the valedictory hanging over us, he was +nice and gay, like the Christmas beeves the city +butchers stick paper rosettes into, or the circus-band +playing like mad while the tumbler who has had a +fall is being carried out to the dressing-tent. Peter +even offhandedly inquired, as he was going, if he +might have Scotty to take care of, provided it was +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279' name='page_279'></a>279</span> +not expedient to take Dinkie’s dog along to Calgary +with us.... I’m not quite certain—I may be wrong, +but there are moments, odd earthquakey moments, +when I have a suspicion that Peter will be keeping +more than Scotty after we’ve trekked off to Calgary!</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280' name='page_280'></a>280</span> +<a name='SATURDAY_THE_FOURTH' id='SATURDAY_THE_FOURTH'></a> +<h2><i>Saturday the Fourth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>This tearing up of roots is a much sorrier business +than I had imagined. And more difficult. I +find it hard to know what to take and what to leave +behind. And there is so much to be thought of, so +much to be arranged for, so much to be done. I have +had to write Duncan and tell him I’ll be a few days +later than I intended. My biggest problem has been +with Whinstane Sandy and Struthers. I called them +in and had a talk with them and told them I wanted +them to keep Casa Grande going the same as ever. +Then I made myself into the god from the machine +by calmly announcing the only way things could be +arranged would be for the two of them to get married.</p> +<p>Struthers, at this suggestion, promptly became as +coy as a partridge-hen. Whinnie, of course, remained +Scottish and canny. He became more shrewdly magnanimous, +however, after we’d had a bit of talk by +ourselves. “Weel, I’ll tak’ the woman, rather than +see her frettin’ hersel’ to death!” he finally conceded, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281' name='page_281'></a>281</span> +knowing only too well he’d nest warm and live +well for the rest of his days. He’d been hoping, he +confessed to me, that some day he’d get back to that +claim of his up in the Klondike. But he wasn’t +so young as he once was. And perhaps Dinkie, when +he was grown to a man, could go up and look after +his rights. ’Twould be a grand journey, he averred +with a sigh, for a high-spirited lad turned twenty.</p> +<p>“I’ll be stayin’ with Pee-Wee and the old place +here,” concluded Whinstane Sandy, giving me his +rough old hand as a pledge. And with tears in my +eyes I lifted that faithful old hand up to my lips and +kissed it. Whinnie, I knew, would die for me. But +he would pass away before he’d be willing to put his +loyalty and his courage and his kind-heartedness into +pretty speeches. Struthers, on the other hand, has +become too flighty to be of much use to me in my +packing. She has plunged headlong into a riot of +baking, has sent for a fresh supply of sage tea, and +is secretly perusing a dog-eared volume which I have +reason to know is <i>The Marriage Guide</i>.</p> +<p>Gershom, all things considered, is the most dolorous +member of our home circle. He says little, but +inspects me with the wounded eyes of a neglected +spaniel. He will stay on at Casa Grande until the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282' name='page_282'></a>282</span> +Easter holidays, and then migrate to the Teetzels’. +As for Dinkie and Poppsy, they are too young to +understand. The thought of change excites them, +but they have no idea of what they are leaving behind.</p> +<p>Last night, when I was dog-tired after my long +day’s work, I remembered about Dinkie’s school-essays +and took them out to read. And having done +so, I realized there was something sacred about them. +They gave me a glimpse of a groping young soul +reaching up toward the light.</p> +<p>“We have a Flag,” I read, “to thrill our bones +and be prod of and no man boy woman or girl” (and +the not altogether artless <i>diminuendo</i> did not escape +me!) “should never let it drag in the dust. It flotes +at the bow of our ships and waves from the top of +most post offices etc. And now we have a flag and a +flag staf in front of our school and on holdays and +when every grate man dies we put said flag up at haf +mast.... It is the flag of the rich and the poor, the +flag of our country which all of whose citizens have +a right to fly, the hig” (obviously meant for <i>high</i>) +“and the low, the rich and the poor. And we must +not only keep our flag but blazen it still further with +deeds nobely done. If ever you have to shed your +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283' name='page_283'></a>283</span> +blood for your country remeber its for the nobelest +flag that flies the same being an emblen of our native +land to which it represens and stands in high esteem +by the whole people of a country.” ... God bless +his patriotic little bones! My bairn knew what he +was trying to get at, but it’s plain he didn’t quite +know how to get there.</p> +<p>But the drama of the Capture of Quebec plainly +put him on easier ground. For here was a story +worth the telling. And what could be more glorious +than the death of Wolfe as I see it through my little +Dinkie’s eyes?</p> +<p>For I read: “The french said Wolfe” (<i>can</i> has first +been written and then scratched out and <i>would</i> substituted) +“never get up that rivver but Wolfe fooled +them with a trick by running the french flag up on +his shipps so the french pilots without fear padled +out and come abord when Wolfe took them prissoners +and made them pilot the english ships safe to the +iland of Orlens. He wanted to capsture the city of +Quebec without distroiting it. But the clifs were to +high and the brave Montcalm dified Wolfe who lost +400 men and got word Amherst could not come and +so himself took sick and went to bed. But a desserter +from the french gave Wolfe the pass word and when +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284' name='page_284'></a>284</span> +his ships crept further up the rivver in the dark a +french senntry called out qui vive and one of Wolfe’s +men who spoke french well ansered la france and the +senntry said to himself they was french ships and let +them go on. Next day Wolfe was better and saw a +goat clime up the clifs near the plains of Abraham +and said where a goat could go he could go to. So +he forgot being sick and desided to clime up Wolfe’s +cove which was not then called that until later. It +was a dark night and they went in row boats with all +the oars mufled. It was a formadible sight that +would have made even bolder men shrink with fear. +But it was the brave Higlanders who lead with their +muskits straped to their sholdiers climing up the +steep rock by grabbing at roots of trees and shrubbs +and not a word was wispered but the french senntrys +saw the tree moving and asked qui vive again. The +same sholdier who once studdied hard and lernt +french said la france as he had done before and they +got safe to the top and faced the city. At brake of +day they stood face to face, french and english. But +Montcalm marched out to cut them off there and +Wolfe lined his men up in a line and said hold your +fire until they are within forty paces away from us. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285' name='page_285'></a>285</span> +The french caused many causilties but the english +never wavered. Montcalm still on horse back reseaved +a mortal wound, he would of fell off if two of his tall +granadeers hadn’t held him up and Wolfe too was +shot on the wirst but went right on. Again he was +shot this time more fataly and as they were laying +him down one of the men exclaimed See how they run. +Who run murmurred the dieing Wolfe. The enemy +sir replied the man. Then I die happy said Generral +Wolfe and with a great sigh rolled over on his side +and died.... And when the doctor told Montcalm +he could only live a few hours he said God be prased I +shall not live to see Quebec fall. Brave words like +those should not be forgoten and what Wolfe said +was just as brave. No more fiting words could be +said by anybody than those he said in the boats with +the mufled oars that night that the paths of glory +leed but to the grave.” ...</p> +<p>I have folded up the carefully written pages, +reverently, remembering my promise to return them +to Peter. But for a while at least I shall keep them +with me. They have set me thinking, reminding me +how time flies. Here is my little boy, grown into an +historian, sagely philosophizing over the tragedies of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286' name='page_286'></a>286</span> +life. My wee laddie, expressing himself through the +recorded word.... It seems such a short time ago +that he was taking his first stumbling steps along the +dim hallways of language. I have been turning back +to the journal I began shortly after his birth and kept +up for so long, the naïve journal of a young mother +registering her wonder at the unfolding mysteries of +life. It became less minute and less meticulous, I +notice, as the years slipped past, and after the advent +of Poppsy and Pee-Wee the entries seem a bit hurried +and often incoherent. But I have dutifully noted +how my Dinkie first said “Ah goom” for “All gone,” +just as I have fondly remarked his persistent use of +the reiterative intensive, with careful citations of his +“da-da” and his “choo-choo car,” and a “bow-wow” +as applied to any living animal, and “wa-wa” for +water, and “me-me” for milk, and “din-din” for dinner, +and going “bye-bye” for going to sleep on his +little “tum-tum.” I even solemnly ask, forgetting my +Max Müller, what lies at the root of this strange +reduplicative process. Then I come to where I have +set down for future generations the momentous fact +that my Dinkie first said “let’s playtend” for “let’s +pretend,” and spoke of “nasturtiums” as “excursions,” +and announced that he could bark loud +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287' name='page_287'></a>287</span> +enough to make Baby Poppsy’s eyes “bug out” +instead of “bulge out.” And I come again to where +I have affectionately registered the fact that my son +says “set-sun” for “sunset” and speaks of his +“rumpers” instead of his “rompers,” and coins the +very appropriate word “downer” to go with its sister +word of “upper” and describes his Mummy as +“<i>wearing</i> Daddy’s coffee-cup” when he really meant +<i>using</i> Daddy’s coffee-cup.</p> +<p>It all seems very fond and foolish now, just as at +one time it all seemed very big and wonderful. And +I remember schooling my Poppsy to say “Daddy’s all +sweet” and how her little tongue, stumbling over the +sibilant, converted it into the non-complimentary +“Daddy’s all feet,” which my Dinky-Dunk so scowlingly +resented. And I have even compiled a list of +Dinkie’s earliest “howlers,” from the time he was +first interested in Adam and Eve and asked to be +told about “The Garden of Sweden” until he later +explained one of Poppsy’s crying-spells by announcing +she had dug a hole out by the corral and +wanted to bring it into the house. I used to smile a +bit skeptically over these tongue-twists of children, +but now I know they are re-born with each new generation, +the same old turns of thought and the same +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288' name='page_288'></a>288</span> +old kinks of utterance. I don’t know why, but there +is even a touch of sadness about the old jokes now. +The patina of time gathers upon them and mellows +them and makes me realize they belong to the past—the +past with its pain and its joy, that can never +come back to mortal mothers again.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_289' name='page_289'></a>289</span> +<a name='MONDAY_THE_THIRTIETH' id='MONDAY_THE_THIRTIETH'></a> +<h2><i>Monday the Thirtieth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>“We die a little, when we go away.” How true it +is! By to-morrow we will be gone. My heart is +heavy as lead. I go about, doing things for the last +time, looking at things for the last time, and pretending +to be as matter-of-fact as a tripper breaking +camp. But there’s a laryngitis lump in my throat +and there are times when I’m glad I’m almost too +busy to think.</p> +<p>I was hoping that the weather would be bad, as it +ought to at this time of the year, so that I might +leave my prairie with some lessened pang of regret. +But the last two days have been miraculously mild. +A Chinook has been blowing, the sky has been a palpitating +soft dome of azure, and a winey smell of +spring has crept over the earth.... To-night, +knowing it was the last night, I crept out to say +good-by to my little Pee-Wee asleep in his lonely +little bed. It was a perfect night. The Lights were +playing low in the north, weaving together in a +tangle of green and ruby and amethyst. The prairie +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290' name='page_290'></a>290</span> +was very still. The moonlight lay on everything, +thick and golden and soft with mystery. I knelt +beside Pee-Wee’s grave, not in bitterness, but bathed +in peace. I knelt there and prayed.</p> +<p>It frightened me a little, when I looked up, to see +Peter standing beside the little white fence. I +thought, at first, that he was a ghost, he stood so +still and he seemed so tall in the moonlight.</p> +<p>“I’ll watch your boy,” he said very quietly, “until +you come back.”</p> +<p>He made me think of the Old Priest in <i>The Sorrowful +Inheritance</i>. He seemed so calmly benignant, so +dependable, so safe in his simple other-worldliness.</p> +<p>“Oh, Peter!” was all I could say as I moved toward +him in the moonlight. He nodded, as much to himself +as to me, as he took my hand in his. I felt a +great ache, which was not really an ache, and a new +kind of longing which never before, in all my life, I +had nursed or known. I must have moved closer to +Peter, though I could feel his hand pull itself away +from mine. It made me feel terribly alone in the +world.</p> +<p>“Aren’t you going to kiss me good-by?” I cried +out, with my hand on his shoulder.</p> +<p>Peter shook his head from side to side, very slowly. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_291' name='page_291'></a>291</span></p> +<p>“<i>Verboten!</i>” he said as he put his hand over the +hand which I had put on his shoulder.</p> +<p>“But I may never come back. Peter!” I whispered, +feeling the tears go slowly down my wet cheek.</p> +<p>Peter took my unsteady fingers and placed them on +the white pickets of the little rectangular fence.</p> +<p>“You’ll come back,” he said very quietly. And +when I looked up he had turned away.</p> +<p>I could see him walking off in the yellow moonlight +with his shoulders back and his head up. He walked +slowly, with an odd wading movement, like a man +walking through water. I was tempted, for a +moment, to call after him. But some power that was +not of me or any part of me prompted me to silence. +I stood watching him until he seemed a moving +shadow along the level floor of the world flooded with +primrose-yellow, until he became a shifting stroke of +umber on a background of misty gold. I stood looking +after him as he passed away, out of my sight, and +far, far off to the north a coyote howled and over +Casa Grande I could see a thin pennon of chimney-smoke +going up toward Arcturus.... Good-by, +Peter, and God bless you....</p> +<p>Unlimited, indeed, is the power of Eros. For when +I went to slip quietly into the house, I found Whinnie +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292' name='page_292'></a>292</span> +and Struthers seated together beside the kitchen +range. And Struthers was reading <i>Tam O’Shanter</i> +aloud to her laird.</p> +<p>“Read slow, noo, lassie, an’ tak’ it a’ in,” said the +placidly triumphant voice of Whinstane Sandy, “for +it’ll be lang before ye ken its like!”</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_293' name='page_293'></a>293</span> +<a name='THURSDAY_THE_SEVENTEENTH_1' id='THURSDAY_THE_SEVENTEENTH_1'></a> +<h2><i>Thursday the Seventeenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>The migration has been effected ... I am alone +in my room, I have two and three-quarters trunks +unpacked, and I feel like a President’s wife the night +after Inauguration. It is well past midnight, but I +am too tired and too unsettled to sleep. Things turn +out so differently to what one expects! And all +change, to the home-staying heart, can be so abysmally +upsetting!...</p> +<p>We were a somewhat disheveled and intimidated flock +when we emerged from our train and found Duncan +awaiting us with an amazingly big touring-car which, +as he explained with a short laugh at my gape of +wonder, the Barcona Mines would pay for in a week.</p> +<p>“It’s no piker you’re pulling with now,” he exclaimed +as we climbed stiff and awkward into that +deep-upholstered grandeur on wheels. He said that +the children had grown but would have to be togged +out with some new duds—little knowing how I had +stayed up until long past midnight mending and +pressing and doing my best to make my bucolic offspring +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_294' name='page_294'></a>294</span> +presentable. And he told me it was <i>some</i> city +I had come to, as I’d very soon see for myself. And +it was <i>some</i> shack he’d corralled for his family, he +added with a chuckle of pride.</p> +<p>I tried to be interested in the skyscrapers he +showed me along Eighth Avenue, and the Palliser, +and the concreted subway, and the Rockies, in the +distance, with the wine-glow on their snow-clad peaks. +And while I did my best to shake off the Maud-Muller +feeling which was creeping over me, by studying the +tranquillizingly remote mountain-tops, Duncan confided +to me that he had first said: “Fifty thousand +or bu’st!” But two months ago he had amended that +to “A hundred thousand or bu’st!” and now he had his +reasons for saying, with his jaw set: “Just a cool +quarter of a million, before I quit this game!”</p> +<p>It was for us, I told myself as I looked down at +my kiddies, that the Dour Man behind the big +mahogany wheel was fighting. This, I felt, should +bring me happiness, and a new sense of security. +And it was only because my stomach was empty, I +tried to assure myself, that my poor old prairie +heart felt that way. I should have been happy, for +I was going to a brand-new home—and it was one of +those foot-hill late afternoons that make you think of +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295' name='page_295'></a>295</span> +the same old razor-blade muffled up in the same old +panne-velvet, an evening of softness shot through +with a steely sharpness. There was a Chinook arch +of Irish point-lace still in the sky, very much like the +one I had left behind me, and the sky itself was a +canopy of robin-egg blue <i>crêpe de chine</i> hemmed with +salmon pink.</p> +<p>But as we whirled up out of the city into the higher +ground of some boulevarded and terraced residential +district the evening air seemed colder and the solemn +old Rockies toward the west took on an air of lonesomeness. +It made the thought of home and open +fires and quiet rooms very welcome. The lights came +out along the asphalted streets, spangling the slopes +of that sedate new suburb with rectangular lines of +brilliants. Duncan, in answer to the questions of the +children, explained that he was taking the longer way +round, so as to give us the best view of the house as +we drove in.</p> +<p>“Here we are!” he exulted as we slowed down and +turned into a crescent lined with baby poplar and +Manitoba maple.</p> +<p>I leaned out and saw a big new house of tapestry +brick, looking oddly palatial on its imposing slope of +rising ground. My husband stopped, in fact, midway +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_296' name='page_296'></a>296</span> +in a foolishly pillared gate that bisected a long +array of cobble-stone walls, so that we might get a +look at the gardens. They seemed very new gardens, +but much of their newness was lost in that mercifully +subduing light in which I saw trim-painted trellises +and sepulchral white flower-urns and pergolas not +yet softened with creepers. There was also a large +iron fountain, painted white, which Duncan apparently +liked very much, from the way he looked at it. +From two of the chimneys I could see smoke going +up in the quiet air. In the windows I could see lights, +rose-shaded and warm, and beyond the shrubbery +somewhere back in the garden a workman was driving +nails. His hammer fell and echoed like a series of +rifle-shots. From the garage chimney, too, came +smoke, and it was plain from the sounds that somebody +inside was busy tuning up a car-engine.</p> +<p>I sat staring at the grounds, at the cobble-stone +walls, at the tapestry-brick house with the high-shouldered +French cornices. It began to creep over +me how it meant service, how it meant protection, +how it meant guarded lives for me and mine, how it +stood an amazingly complicated piece of machinery +which took much thought to organize and much +money to maintain. And the mainspring behind it +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297' name='page_297'></a>297</span> +all, I remembered, was the man sitting at the mahogany +wheel so close to me. Light and warmth and +comfort and safety—they were all to come from the +conceiting and the struggling of my Dour Man, +fighting for an empty-headed family who were +scarcely worth it. He was, after all, the stoker down +in the hole, and without him everything would stop. +So when I saw that he was studying my face with +that intent sidelong glance of his, I reached over and +put my hand on his knee, as I had done so often, in +the old days.</p> +<p>He looked down, at that, with what was almost an +appearance of embarrassment.</p> +<p>“I want to play my part,” I said with all the +earnestness of my earnest old heart, as he let in his +clutch and we started up the winding drive.</p> +<p>“It ought to be a considerable part,” he said as +we drew up under a bone-white porte-cochère where +a small-bodied Jap stood respectfully impassive and +waiting to open the door for us.</p> +<p>My husband got down out of the car. I sat wondering +why I should feel so much like a Lady Jane +Grey approaching the headsman’s <i>makura</i>.</p> +<p>“Come on, kids!” Duncan called out with a parade +of joviality, like a cheer-leader who realized that +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_298' name='page_298'></a>298</span> +things weren’t going just right. For Dinkie, I could +see, was shrinking back in the padded seat. His +underlip was trembling a trifle as he sat staring at +the strange new house. But Poppsy, true little +woman that she was, smiled appreciatively about at +the material grandeurs which confronted her. If +she’d had a tail, I’m sure, she’d have been wagging +it. And this so tickled her dad that he lifted her out +of the car and carried her bodily and triumphantly +up the steps.</p> +<p>I waited for Dinkie, whose eye met mine. I did my +best to show my teeth, that he might understand how +everything was eventually to be for the best. But his +face was still clouded as we climbed the steps and +passed under the yoke.</p> +<p>The little Jap, whose name, I have since found out, +is Tokudo, bowed a jack-knife bow and said +“<i>Irashai</i>” as I passed him. And “<i>Irashai</i>” I have +also discovered, is perfectly good Japanese for “Welcome.”</p> +<p>We had dinner at seven. It was a well-ordered +meal, but it went off rather dismally. I was depressed, +for reasons I couldn’t quite fathom, and the +children were tired, and Duncan, I’m afraid, was a +bit disappointed in us all. Tokudo had brought +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299' name='page_299'></a>299</span> +cocktails for us, and Duncan, seeing I wasn’t drinking +mine, stowed both away in his honorable stomach. +He ate heartily, I noticed, and gave scant +appearance of a man pining away with a broken +heart. After dinner he sat back and bit off the end +of a cigar.</p> +<p>“This is my idea of living,” he proclaimed as he +sent a blue cloud up toward the rather awful dome-light +above the big table. “There’s stir and movement +here, all day long. Something more than sunsets +to look at! You’ll see—something to fill up your +day! Why, night seems to come before I even know +it. And before I’m out of bed I’m brooding over +what’s ahead of me for that particular date and day—Say, +that girl of ours is falling asleep in her chair +there!”</p> +<p>So I escaped and put the children to bed. And +while thus engaged I discovered that some of Duncan’s +new friends were dropping in on him. I wanted +to stay up-stairs, for my head was aching a lot and +my heart just a little, but Duncan called to me from +the bottom of the stairs. So down I went, like a +dutiful wife, to the room full of smoke and talk, where +two big men and one very thin woman in a baby-bear +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_300' name='page_300'></a>300</span> +motor coat were drinking Scotch highballs with my +lord and master. They were genial and jolly enough, +but I couldn’t understand their allusions and I +couldn’t see the points to their jokes. And they +seemed to stay an interminable length of time. I +was secretly uncomfortable, until they went, but I +became still more uncomfortable after they had gone.</p> +<p>For as we sat there together, in that oppressive +big room, I made rather an awful discovery. I found +that my husband and I had scarcely anything we +could talk about together. So I sat there, like an +alligator in a bayou, wondering why his rather +flushed face should be turned toward me every now +and then.</p> +<p>My heart beat a little faster as I saw him take out +his watch and wind it up.</p> +<p>“Let’s go to bed,” he said as he pushed it back in +his waistcoat pocket. My heart stopped beating +altogether, for a moment or two. I felt like a slave-girl +in a sheik’s tent, like a desert-woman just sold +into bondage.</p> +<p>It was the smoky air and the highballs, I suppose, +which left his eyes a little bloodshot as he turned +slowly about and studied my face. Then he repeated +what he had said before. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_301' name='page_301'></a>301</span></p> +<p>“<i>I can’t!</i>” I told him, with a foolish surge of +terror.</p> +<p>He sat quite a long time without speaking. I +could see the corners of the Holbein-Astronomer +mouth go down.</p> +<p>“As you say,” he finally remarked, with a grim +sort of quietness. But every bit of color had gone +from his face. I was glad when Tokudo came in to +take away the glasses.</p> +<p>Duncan stood up, after the servant had gone +again, and bowed to me very solemnly.</p> +<p>“<i>Oyasumi nasi</i>,” he said with a stabilizing ironic +smile.</p> +<p>“What does that mean?” I asked, doing my best to +smile back at him.</p> +<p>“That means ‘sleep well,’” explained my husband. +“But Tokudo would probably translate it into ‘Condescend +to enjoy honorable tranquillity.’”</p> +<p>Instead of enjoying honorable tranquillity, however, +I am sitting up into the wee sma’ hours of the +night, patrolling the gloomy ramparts of my soul’s +unrest.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302' name='page_302'></a>302</span> +<a name='WEDNESDAY_THE_TWENTYTHIRD' id='WEDNESDAY_THE_TWENTYTHIRD'></a> +<h2><i>Wednesday the Twenty-Third</i></h2> +</div> +<p>This change to the city means a new life to my +children. But I can also see it means new dangers +and new influences. The simplicity of ranch life has +vanished. And Dinkie and Poppsy are already getting +acquainted with their neighbors. A Ford truck +came within an inch of running over Poppsy this +morning. She has announced a curiosity to investigate +ice-cream sodas, and Dinkie has proclaimed his +intention of going to the movies Saturday afternoon +with Benny McArthur, the banker’s son in the next +block. On Monday I’m to take my children to +school. “One of the finest school-buildings in all the +West,” Duncan has proudly explained. I can’t help +thinking of Gershom and his little cubby-hole of a +wooden building where he is even now so solemnly and +yet so kind-heartedly teaching the three R’s to a +gathering of little prairie outlaws.</p> +<p>I shall have time on my hands, I see, for Hilton +and his wife, our English gardener-chauffeur and our +portly maid-of-all-work, pretty well cover what the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303' name='page_303'></a>303</span> +wonderful Tokudo overlooks. And Tokudo <i>is</i> a wonder. +That cat-footed little Jap does the ordering +and cooking and serving; he answers the door and +the telephone; he attends to the rugs and the hardwood +floors; he rules over the butler’s pantry and +polishes the silver and inspects the linen, and even +keeps the keys to Duncan’s carefully guarded wine-cellar, +which the mistress of the house herself has not +yet dared to invade.</p> +<p>My husband seems to be very busy with his coal-mines +and his other interests. He said last night that +his idea of happiness is to be so immersed in his work +as to be unconscious of time and undisturbed by its +passing. And he <i>has</i> been happy, in that way. But +Time, that patient remodeler of all things mortal, +can still work while we sleep. And something has +been happening, without Duncan quite knowing it. +He has changed. He is older, for one thing. I don’t +mean that my husband is an old man. But I can see +a number of early-autumnal alterations in him. He’s +a trifle heavier and stiffer. He’s lost a bit of his +springiness. And he seems to know it, in his secret +heart of hearts, for he tries to make up for that loss +with a sort of coerced blitheness which doesn’t always +carry. He affects a sort of creaking jauntiness which +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304' name='page_304'></a>304</span> +sometimes falls short of its aim. When he can’t clear +the hurdle, I notice, he has the habit of whipping up +his tired spirits with a cocktail or a highball or a +silver-fizz. But he is preoccupied, at times. And at +other times he is disturbingly short-tempered. He +announced this morning, almost gruffly, that we’d +had about enough of this “Dinkie and Poppsy business,” +and the children might as well be called by +their real names. So I shall make another effort to +get back to “Elmer” and “Pauline Augusta.” But +I feel, in my bones, that those pompous appellatives +will not be always remembered. It has just occurred +to me that my old habit of calling my husband +“Dinky-Dunk” has slipped away from me. Endearing +diminutives, I suppose, are not elicited by polar +bears.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_305' name='page_305'></a>305</span> +<a name='THURSDAY_THE_THIRTYFIRST' id='THURSDAY_THE_THIRTYFIRST'></a> +<h2><i>Thursday the Thirty-First</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I don’t quite know what’s the matter with me. I’m +like a cat in a strange garret. I don’t seem to be +fitting in. I sat at the piano last night playing +“What’s this dull town to me, Robin Adair?” And +Duncan, with the fit and natural spirit of the home-booster, +actively resented that oblique disparagement +of his new business-center. He believes implicitly in +Calgary and its future.</p> +<p>As for myself, I am rigidly suspending all judgments. +I’m at least trying to play my part, even +though my spirit isn’t in it. There are times when +I’m tempted to feel that a foot-hill city of this size +is neither fish nor fowl. It impresses me as a frontier +cow-town grown out of its knickers and still ungainly +in its first long trousers. But I can’t help +being struck by people’s incorruptible pride in their +own community. It’s a sort of religious faith, a fixed +belief in the future, a stubborn optimism that is +surely something more than self-interest. It’s the +Dutch courage that makes deprivation and long waiting +endurable. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306' name='page_306'></a>306</span></p> +<p>It’s the women, and the women alone, who seem left +out of the procession. They impress me as having +no big interests of their own, so they are compelled +to <i>playtend</i> with make-believe interests. They race +like mad in the social squirrel-cage, or drug themselves +with bridge and golf and the country club, or +take to culture with a capital C and read papers +culled from the Encyclopedias; or spend their husbands’ +money on year-old Paris gowns and make love +to other women’s mates. The altitude, I imagine, +has quite a little to do with the febrile pace of things +here. Or perhaps it’s merely because I’m an old +frump from a back-township ranch!</p> +<p>But I have no intention of trying to keep up with +them, for I have a constitutional liking for quietness +in my old age. And I can’t engross myself in their +social aspirations, for I’ve seen a bit too much of +the world to be greatly taken with the internecine +jealousies of a twenty-year-old foot-hill town. My +“day” in this aristocratic section is Thursday, and +Tokudo this afternoon admitted callers from seven +closed cars, two landaulets, three Detroit electrics +and one hired taxi. I know, because I counted ’em. +The children and I posed like a Raeburn group and +did our best to be respectable, for Duncan’s sake. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307' name='page_307'></a>307</span> +But he seems to have taken up with some queer people +here, people who drop in at any time of the evening +and smoke and drink and solemnly discuss how a +shandygaff should be mixed and tell stories I +wouldn’t care to have the children hear.</p> +<p>There’s one couple Duncan asked me to be +especially nice to, a Mr. and Mrs. Murchison. The +latter, I find, is usually addressed as “Slinkie” by +her friends, and the former is known as “Cattalo +Charley” because he once formed a joint-stock company +which was to make a fortune interbreeding buffalo +and range-cattle, the product of that happy +union being known, I believe, as “cattalo.” Duncan +calls him a “promoter,” but my earlier impression of +him as a born gambler has been confirmed by the +report that he’s interested in a lignite briquetting +company, that he’s fathering a scheme, not only to +raise stock-yard reindeer in the sub-Arctics but also +to grow karakule sheep in the valleylands of the +Coast, that he once sold mummy wheat at forty dollars +a bushel, and that in the old boom days he promoted +no less than three oil companies. And the +time will come, Duncan avers, when that man will be +a millionaire.</p> +<p>As for “Slinkie,” his wife, I can’t be quite sure +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_308' name='page_308'></a>308</span> +whether I like her or not. I at least admire her +audacity and her steel-trap quickness of mind. She +has a dead white skin, green eyes, and most wonderful +hair, hair the color of a well-polished copper samovar. +She is an extremely thin woman who affects sheathe +skirts and rather reminds me of a boa-constrictor. +She always reeks of <i>Apres londre</i> and uses a lip-stick +as freely before the world as an orchestra conductor +uses a baton or a street-sweeper a broom. She is +nervous and sharp-tongued and fearless and I +thought, at first, that she was making a dead set at +my Duncan. But I can now see how she confronts +all men with that same dangerous note of intimacy. +Her real name is Lois. She talks about her convent +days in Belgium, sings <i>risque</i> songs in very bad +French, and smokes and drinks a great deal more +than is good for her. In Vancouver, when informed +that she was waiting for a street-car on a non-stop +corner, she sat down between the tracks, with her +back to the approaching car. The motorman, of +course, had to come to a stop—whereupon she arose +with dignity and stepped aboard. Duncan has told +me this story twice, and tends to consider Lois a +really wonderful character. I am a little afraid of +her. She asked me the other day how I liked Calgary. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_309' name='page_309'></a>309</span> +I responded, according to Hoyle, that I liked the +clear air and the clean streets and the Rockies looking +so companionably down over one’s shoulder. Lois +hooted as she tapped a cigarette end against her +hennaed thumb-nail.</p> +<p>“Just wait until the sand-storms, my dear!” she +said as she struck a match on her slipper-heel.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_310' name='page_310'></a>310</span> +<a name='SATURDAY_THE_SECOND' id='SATURDAY_THE_SECOND'></a> +<h2><i>Saturday the Second</i></h2> +</div> +<p>My old friend Gershom has very slyly written a +<i>rondeau</i> to me. I have just found it enclosed in my +<i>Golden Treasury</i>, which he handed back to me that +last night at Casa Grande. It’s the first actual +<i>rondeau</i> I ever had indited to my humble self, and +while I’m a bit set up about it, I can’t quite detach +from Gershom’s lines a vaguely obituarial atmosphere +which tends to depress me.</p> +<p>I can see that it may not be the best <i>rondeau</i> in the +world, but I’m going to keep it until my bones are +dust, for good old Gershom’s sake. And some day, +when he marries the nice girl he deserves to marry, +and has a kiddy or two of his own, I’ll shame his gray +hairs by parading it before his offspring! I have +just been re-reading the lines, in Gershom’s copperplate +script. They are as follows:</p> +<table style='margin: auto' summary=''><tr><td> +<p style='text-align:center; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'><i>To C. McK.</i></p> +<p style='text-align:center; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'></p> +<p style='text-align:center; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'><i>On Returning Her Copy of the Golden Treasury</i></p> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'> + <br /> +This golden book, dear friend, wherein each line<br /> +<span style='margin-left: 0.78125em;'>Holds close a charm for knowing eyes to meet,</span><br /> +<span style='margin-left: 0.78125em;'>Holds doubly mystical and doubly sweet</span><br /> +An inner charm no language may define:<br /> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_311' name='page_311'></a>311</span> + <br /> +For o’er each page a woman’s soul divine<br /> +<span style='margin-left: 0.78125em;'>Bent low a space for kindred souls to greet,</span><br /> +<span style='margin-left: 0.78125em;'>And here her eyes were lit with gladness fleet</span><br /> +Because of songs that graced with rare design<br /> +<span style='margin-left: 1.5625em;'>This book of thine!</span><br /> + <br /> +And now I give back into Beauty’s hand<br /> +<span style='margin-left: 0.78125em;'>Her borrowed songs, but I shall hold always</span><br /> +Secret and safe from every care’s demand,<br /> +<span style='margin-left: 0.78125em;'>A flame of light to fill my emptier days,</span><br /> +That quieter fellowship, which made a shrine<br /> +<span style='margin-left: 1.171875em;'>This book of thine!</span><br /> +</p> +<p style='text-align:right; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'>G. B.</p> +</td></tr></table> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_312' name='page_312'></a>312</span> +<a name='TUESDAY_THE_FIFTH_1' id='TUESDAY_THE_FIFTH_1'></a> +<h2><i>Tuesday the Fifth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>The weather is balmier, and just a tinge of green +is creeping into the tan of the foot-hill slopes. +Spring is coming again.</p> +<p>I went shopping in the Hudson Bay Store yesterday +and found it much more metropolitan than I had +expected. And I find I am three whole laps behind +in that steeplechase known as Style. But I got a +raft of things for Pauline Augusta, and a Boy Scout +outfit for my laddie.</p> +<p>One of the few women I like in Calgary is Dinkie’s—I +mean Elmer’s—new school-teacher. Her name +is Lossie Brown and she is an earnest-eyed girl who’s +saving up to go to Europe some day and study art. +She’s a trifle shy, and unmistakably moody, but her +mind is as bright as a new pin. And some bright +morning, when the rose of womanhood has really +opened, she’s going to wake up a howling beauty. I +love her, too, for the interest she has taken in my boy, +whom she reports as getting along much better than +she had expected. So I have asked her to write a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_313' name='page_313'></a>313</span> +little note to Gershom Binks, advising him of his ex-pupil’s +advance. For Lossie is a girl I’d like Gershom +to know. And she has done this for me. I +ask her over to the house as often as I can and yesterday +I had Dinkie slip a little platinum-banded +fountain-pen, with a card, into the pocket of her +rather threadbare ulster. Duncan, however, is not +in the least interested in Lossie. He despises what he +calls insignificant people.</p> +<p>On my way home from shopping I had Hilton drive +me about some of the less-known parts of the city. +And I have been compelled to recast some of my +earlier impressions of Calgary. It is wonderful, in +many ways, and some day, I can see, it will be beautiful, +just as Lossie Brown will some day be beautiful.</p> +<p>In the first place, it is so happily situated, lying +as it does half-way between the mountains and the +plain. And the blue Bow comes dancing so joyously +down from the Rockies and the older city sleeps so +happily in the sunny crook of its valley-arm, while +the newer suburbs seem to boil up and run over the +surrounding hills like champagne bubbling over the +rim of a glass. There are raw edges, of course, but +time will eventually attend to these. Now and then, +between the motor-cars, you will see a creaking Red +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_314' name='page_314'></a>314</span> +River cart. Next to an office-building of gray sandstone +you’re likely to spot what looks like a squatter’s +wickyup of rusty galvanized iron. Yesterday, +on our main street where the electric-cars were clanging +and the limousines were throwing their exhaust +incense to the gods of the future, I caught sight of a +lonely and motionless figure, isolated in the midst of +a newer world. It was the figure of a Cree squaw, +blanketed and many-wrinkled and unmistakably +dirty, blinking at the devil-wagons and the ceaseless +hurry of the white man. And being somewhat Indianized, +as my husband once assured me I was, I could +sympathize with that stolid old lady in the blanket.</p> +<p>I’m even beginning to find that one can get tired of +optimism, especially when it is being so plainly converted +from a psychic abstraction into a municipal +asset. There’s a sort of communal Christian Science +in this place which ordains that thought shall not +dwell on such transient evils as drought or black rust +or early frost or hail-storms or money stringencies. +And there’s a sort of youthful greediness in people’s +longing to live all there is of life to live and to know +all there is of life to know. For there is a limit to +the sensations we can digest, just as there is a limit +to the meat we can digest. And out here we have a +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_315' name='page_315'></a>315</span> +tendency to bolt more than is good for us, to bolt it +without pausing to get the true taste of it. The +women of this town remind me more and more of mice +in an oxygen bell; they race round and round, drunk +with an excitement they can’t quite understand, until +they burn up their little lives the same as the mice +burn up their little lungs.</p> +<p>... I’ve had a letter from Whinstane Sandy to-day, +writing about seed-wheat and the repairs for +the tractor. It seems like a message from another +world. He reports that poor old Scotty is eating +again and no longer mourns day in and day out for +his lost master. And Mr. Ketley has very kindly +brought over the liniment for Mudski’s shoulder. +... Whatever I may be, or whatever I may have +done, I feel that I can still cleanse my heart by sacrifice.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_316' name='page_316'></a>316</span> +<a name='FRIDAY_THE_NINTH' id='FRIDAY_THE_NINTH'></a> +<h2><i>Friday the Ninth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>One can get out of the habit, apparently, of having +children about. My kiddies, I begin to see, +occasionally grate on Duncan. He brought tears to +the eyes of Pauline Augusta yesterday by the way he +scolded her for using a lead-pencil on the living-room +woodwork. And the night before he shouted much +strong language at Elmer for breaking a window-pane +in the garage with Benny McArthur’s new air-gun.</p> +<p>Elmer and his father, I’m afraid, have rather +grown away from each other. More than once I’ve +caught Duncan staring at his son and heir in a +puzzled and a slightly frustrated sort of way. And +Elmer’s soul promptly becomes <i>incommunicado</i> when +his iron-browed pater is in the neighborhood.</p> +<p>Duncan is very proud of his grand new house. He +is anxious to build a conservatory out along the +southwest wing. But he has asked how long a conservatory +would last with two young mountain-goats +gamboling along its leads.... Lossie, little suspecting +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_317' name='page_317'></a>317</span> +the pang she was giving me, laughingly +showed me a manuscript which she found by accident +in my Dinkie’s reader. It was a poem, dedicated to +“D. O’L.” And written in a stiff little hand I read:</p> +<table style='margin: auto' summary=''><tr><td> +<p style='margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;'> +“Your lips are lined with roses,<br /> +<span style='margin-left: 0.78125em;'>Your eyes they shinne like gold</span><br /> +If you call me from the sunlight,<br /> +<span style='margin-left: 0.78125em;'>I’ll answer from the cold.</span><br /> +But I wonder why, Oh, why,<br /> +<span style='margin-left: 0.78125em;'>You stay so far from me?</span><br /> +If you whisper from the prarrie,<br /> +<span style='margin-left: 0.78125em;'>I’ll call from Calgary.”</span></p> +</td></tr></table> +<p>“Won’t it be wonderful,” said Lossie as I sat pondering +over those foolish little lines, “won’t it be wonderful, +if Dinkie grows up to be a great poet?”</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_318' name='page_318'></a>318</span> +<a name='MONDAY_THE_ELEVENTH' id='MONDAY_THE_ELEVENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Monday the Eleventh</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Elmer, <i>alias</i> Dinkie, after many days’ mourning +for his lost Scotty, is consoling himself, as other men +do, with a substitute. Last Friday he Brought home +a flop-eared pup with a drooping tail and an indefinite +ancestry, explaining that he had come into possession +of the aforementioned animal by the duly +delivered purchase-price of thirty-seven cents.</p> +<p>Remembering Minty and certain matters of the +past, I was troubled in spirit. But I couldn’t see +why my son shouldn’t have an animal to love. And I +have had Hilton fix a little box in one corner of the +garage for Dinkie’s new pet, which he has christened +Rowdy.</p> +<p>Rowdy, I now see, is a canine of limited spirit and +is not likely to repeat the offenses of Minty. But +Dinkie really loves his new pup, despite the latter’s +indubitably democratic ancestry. And I begin to +suspect that my laddie’s weakness for mongrels may +arise from his earlier experience with Duncan’s +blooded bulldog, which he struggled with for three +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_319' name='page_319'></a>319</span> +whole days, fondly and foolishly trying to teach that +stolid animal the art of “pointing.”</p> +<p>On Saturday Dinkie smuggled the verminous +Rowdy to the upper bathroom and gave him a thorough +but quite unrelished soaping ... Dinkie, by +the way, is now a “cub” in the Boy Scouts and +after adorning himself in khaki goes off on hikes and +takes lessons in woodcraft. Saturday the Scouts of +his school marched behind a real band and Lossie +and I sat in the car waiting for my laddie to appear. +He wiggled one hand, and smiled sheepishly, as he +caught sight of us. But he kept “eyes front” and +refused to give any further sign as he marched +bravely on behind that brave music. He is learning +the law of the pack. For some first frail ideas of +service are beginning to incubate in that egoistic +little bean of his. And he’s suffering, I suppose, the +old contest between the ancestral lust to kill and the +new-born inclination to succor and preserve. That +means he may some day be “a gentleman.” And I’ve +a weakness for that old Newman definition of a gentleman +as one who never inflicts pain—“tender +towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and +merciful towards the absurd”—conducting himself +toward his enemy as if he were some day to be his +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_320' name='page_320'></a>320</span> +friend. And I also wish there were a few more of +them in this hard old world of ours!</p> +<p>Speaking of gentlemen, there’s a Captain Goodhue +here whom I rather like. Lois Murchison brought us +together in the tea-room of the Palliser. In more +ways than one he reminds me of Peter. But Captain +Goodhue is a much older man, and is English, coming +from a very excellent family in Sussex. He’s one of +those iron-gray ex-Army men who still believe in a +monocle and can be loyal to a queen even though she +wears a basque with darts in it. And he doesn’t talk +to a woman with that ragging air of condescension +which seems to be peculiar to western American civilization. +He is courteous and thoughtful and sincere, +though I noticed that he winced a trifle when I suddenly +remembered, as he was taking his departure, +that the McKails were living in what must have once +been his house. He blinked, like a well-groomed old +eagle, when I reminded him of this. I never dreamed, +of course, that the subject would be painful to him. +But it was an honor, he acknowledged with a bow, to +pass his household gods on to a lady to whom so +much had already been given.</p> +<p>When I asked Lois about it, later on, she rather +indifferently acknowledged that the old gentleman +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_321' name='page_321'></a>321</span> +had been making a mess of his different business ventures. +He was much better at golf than getting +in on the ground-floor of a land deal. He was too +old fogy, said Slinkie, to make good in the West. +He still kept his head up, but they’d pretty well +picked him to the bones.... Lois, by the way, +describes me as something new in her menagerie and +drops in to see me at the most unexpected moments. +Then her tongue goes like a mower-knife. She is +persuaded that I should permanent-wave my hair, +lower my waist-line, and go in for amethysts. “And +interest yourself, my dear, in an outside man or +two,” she has sagely advised me. “For husbands, you’ll +find, always accept you at the other mutt’s valuation!”</p> +<p>I was tempted to make her open her jade-green +eyes, for a moment, by telling her I was already +interested in an outside man or two and that my lord +and master hadn’t been much influenced by the extraneous +appreciations. But I’m a little afraid of +Slinkie and her serpent’s tongue. And I’m a little +afraid of this new circle into which my Duncan has +so laboriously engineered himself. They more and +more impress on my simple old prairie soul that the +single-track woman is the woman who gets most out +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_322' name='page_322'></a>322</span> +of life, that there’s nothing really great and nothing +really enduring that is not built on loyalty and truth. +Character is Fate, as I once before inscribed in this +book of my life. And I’ve been sitting up to-night, +while the eternal bridge game is going on below, asking +myself if all is well with Chaddie McKail. Have +I, or have I not, conceded too much? Am I turning +into nothing more than a mush of concession? +Haven’t I been bribed by comfort, and blinded to a +situation which I am now almost afraid to face? +Haven’t I been selfishly scheming for the welfare of +my children and endangering all their future and my +own by the price I am paying? Haven’t I been +crazily manning a rickety old pump, trying to keep +afloat a family hulk whose seams are wide open and +whose timbers are water-logged? And how long can +this sort of thing go on? And what will be the end +of it?</p> +<p>I try to warn myself not to smash my goods to kill +a rat, as the Chinese say. I try to flatter myself that +I am not letting circumstances stampede me into any +hasty decision. There’s many a woman, I suppose, +with a husband whose legal promise has outlived his +loyalty. But all is not well here about my heart. I +know that, by the way it keeps sending up little trial-balloons, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_323' name='page_323'></a>323</span> +to see which way the wind is really blowing.</p> +<p>... And Sunday night Cattalo Charlie went home +quite drunk. And our local member, emboldened by +his seventh highball, offhandedly invited me to accompany +him on a little run up to Banff, stabbing me +with a hurt look when I told him I’d see when Duncan +could get away from his work....</p> +<p>I wonder if spring is coming to Casa Grande? +And at Alabama Ranch? And are the pussy-willows +showing in the slough-ends? And why doesn’t Peter +Ketley ever write to me?</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_324' name='page_324'></a>324</span> +<a name='SATURDAY_THE_SIXTEENTH' id='SATURDAY_THE_SIXTEENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Saturday the Sixteenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>Lossie and Gershom, I find, have drifted into the +habit of writing to each other. It is, of course, all +purely platonic and pedagogic, arising out of a common +interest in my Dinkie’s academic advancement. +But Lossie borrowed Dinkie this morning to have a +photograph taken with him, one copy of which she +has very generously promised to send on to Gershom.... +Struthers has sent me a very satisfactory +report from Casa Grande, which I dreamed last night +had burned to the ground, compelling me and my kiddies +to live in the old prairie-schooner, laboriously +pulled about the prairie by Tithonus and Calamity +Kate. And when I applied at Peter’s door for a +handful of meal for my starving children, he called +me worse than a fallen woman and drove me off into +the wilderness.</p> +<p>Duncan asked me to-day if I’d motor up to the +mines with him for the week-end. I had to tell him +that I’d promised to take Elmer and Pauline +Augusta to hear Kathleen Parlow and that it +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_325' name='page_325'></a>325</span> +wouldn’t seem quite fair to break my word. Duncan +said that I was the best judge of that. Then he +slammed a drawer shut and asked me, in his newer +manner, how long I intended to pull this iceberg +stuff. “For I can’t see,” he concluded after calling +out for Tokudo to bring his hat and coat, “that I’m +getting such a hell of a lot out of this arrangement!”</p> +<p>I asked him, as quietly as I could, what he expected +of me. But I could feel my heart pounding quick +against my ribs. I am not, and never pretended to +be, any stained-glass saint. And there were a few +things I felt it was about time to unload. But +Tokudo cat-footed back with the coat, and I could +hear Lossie’s clear laugh as she came in through the +front door with the returning Dinkie, and some inner +voice warned me to hold my peace. So Duncan and +I merely stood there staring at each other, for a +moment or two, across an abysmal and unbridgeable +gulf of silence. Then he strode out to his car without +as much as a howdy-do to the startled and slightly +mystified Lossie.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_326' name='page_326'></a>326</span> +<a name='MONDAY_THE_EIGHTEENTH' id='MONDAY_THE_EIGHTEENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Monday the Eighteenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I have just learned that we were blackballed from +the Country Club. My husband, at least, has met +with that experience.</p> +<p>It was Lois who let the cat out of the bag. She +wasn’t clear on all the details, but it was that old has-been +of a Goodhue who was at the bottom of it all, +according to the lady known as Slinkie. Duncan +and he had clashed, from the first. Then Duncan had +bought up his paper, and compelled him to mortgage +his home. It was because of something to do with the +Barcona Mines directorate, Lois thought, that Captain +Goodhue had had Duncan blackballed when he +applied for membership in the Country Club, the +Captain being vice-president of the original holding +company. Lois laughed none too pleasantly when she +added that her Charley and my Duncan had joined +hands to go after the old man’s scalp. And they had +got it. They turned him inside out, before they got +through with him. They took his fore-lock and his +teepee and his last string of wampum. And the old +snob, of course, would never forgive them.</p> +<p>... They took his fore-lock, and his teepee ... +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_327' name='page_327'></a>327</span> +And it was Chaddie McKail and her bairns who were +now housing warm in that captured teepee! And all +this toiling and moiling, on the part of my husband, +all this scheming and intriguing and juggling with +figures, had been a campaign for power, a plotting +and working to get even with this haughty old enemy +who could carry his defeat so lightly! To be blackballed +like that, I remembered, was to be proclaimed +not a gentleman. And it must have cut deep. At one +time, I suppose, Duncan would have called his monocled +captain out. But men seem to fight differently +nowadays. They fight differently, but no less grimly. +And Duncan, whether it is a virtue or a vice in his +make-up, would always be a fighter.... Yet I have +no sense of gratitude to Lois Murchison for depositing +her painful truths in my lap. She warned me, in +her artless soprano, that there wasn’t much good in +sentimentalizing the situation. But she has thrown +a shadow across the house which I was trying to make +into a home. Without quite knowing it, she has +cheapened her life-mate in my eyes. Without quite +intending it, she has left my own husband more ignominious +than he once stood. I was trying hard to +school myself into a respect for his material successes. +I was struggling to excuse a great many +things by the engrossing nature of his work. But the +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_328' name='page_328'></a>328</span> +motive behind all his efforts seemed suddenly a sordid +one, in many ways a mean one.</p> +<p>I keep remembering what Lois said about not sentimentalizing +a situation. But I’m not yet such a mush +of concession that I can’t tell black from white. And +there’s some part of us, some vague but unescapable +part of us, which we must respect, otherwise we have +no right to walk God’s good earth....</p> +<p>I want to get away, for a day or two, to think +things out. I think, before Duncan gets back to-morrow, +I shall take Poppsy and run up to Banff. +I may get my view-point back. And the mountain +quietness may do me good....</p> +<p>I keep having that same dull ache of disappointment +which came to me as a girl, after I’d idolized a +great man called Meredith and after I’d almost +prayed to a great poet called Browning, on finding +that one was so imperfectly monogamous and that +the other philandered and talked foolishly to women. +I had thrust my girlish faith in their hands, as so +often befalls with the young, and they had betrayed +it.... But for the second time since I married, I +have been reading <i>Modern Love</i>. And I can almost +forgive the Apollo of Box Hill for that betrayal +which he knew nothing about.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_329' name='page_329'></a>329</span> +<a name='THURSDAY_THE_TWENTYEIGHTH' id='THURSDAY_THE_TWENTYEIGHTH'></a> +<h2><i>Thursday the Twenty-Eighth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>This is Thursday the twenty-eighth of April. I +want to be sure of that. For there are very few +things I can be sure of now.</p> +<p>The bottom has fallen out of my world. I sit here, +telling myself to be calm. But it’s not easy to sit +quiet when you face the very worst that all life could +confront you with. <i>My Dinkie has run away.</i></p> +<p>My boy has left me, has left his home, has vanished +like smoke into the Unknown. He is gone and I have +no trace of him.</p> +<p>I find it hard to write. Yet I <i>must</i> write, for the +mere expression of what I feel tends to ease the ache. +It helps to keep me sane. And already I realize I +was wrong when I wrote “the very worst that all life +could confront you with.” For my laddie, after all, +is not dead. He must still be alive. And while there’s +life, there’s hope.</p> +<p>I got back from Banff yesterday morning about +nine, and Hilton was there with the car to meet me, +as I had told him to be. I was anxious to know at +once if everything was all right, but I found it hard +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_330' name='page_330'></a>330</span> +to put a question so personal before that impersonal-eyed +Englishman. So I strove to give my interrogation +an air of the casual by offhandedly inquiring: +“How’s Rowdy, Hilton?”</p> +<p>“Dead, ma’am,” was his prompt reply.</p> +<p>This rather took my breath away.</p> +<p>“Do you mean to say that Rowdy is <i>dead</i>?” I +insisted, noticing Poppsy’s color change as she listened.</p> +<p>“Killed, ma’am,” said the laconic Hilton.</p> +<p>“By whom?” I demanded.</p> +<p>“Mr. Murchison, ma’am,” was the answer.</p> +<p>“How?” I asked, feeling my vague dislike for that +particular name sharpen up to something dangerously +like hatred.</p> +<p>“He always comes up the drive a bit fast-like, +ma’am. He hit the pup, and that was the end of +him!”</p> +<p>“Does Dinkie know?” was my first question, after +that.</p> +<p>“He <i>saw</i> it, ma’am,” admitted my car-driver.</p> +<p>“Saw what?”</p> +<p>“Saw Mr. Murchison throw the dog over the wall +into the brush!”</p> +<p>“What did he say?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_331' name='page_331'></a>331</span></p> +<p>“He swore a bit, ma’am, and then laughed,” admitted +Hilton, after a pause.</p> +<p>“Dinkie laughed?” I cried, incredulous.</p> +<p>“No; Mr. Murchison, ma’am,” explained Hilton.</p> +<p>“What did Dinkie say?” I insisted. And again the +man on the driving-seat remained silent a moment or +two.</p> +<p>“It was what he <i>did</i>, ma’am,” he finally remarked.</p> +<p>“What did he do?” I demanded.</p> +<p>“Ran into the house, ma’am, and snatched the icepick +off the kitchen table. Then he went to the big +car like a mad ’un, he did. Pounded holes in every +blessed tire with his pick!”</p> +<p>“And then what?” I asked, with my heart up in +my throat.</p> +<p>Hilton waited until he had taken a crowded corner +before answering.</p> +<p>“Then he found the dead dog, ma’am, and bathed +it, and borrowed the garden spade from me. Then +he took it somewheres back in the ravine and buried +it. I gave him the tool-box off the old roadster, to +put what was left of the pup in.”</p> +<p>“And then?” I prompted, with a quaver in my +voice I couldn’t control.</p> +<p>“He met Mr. Murchison coming out and he called +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_332' name='page_332'></a>332</span> +him w’at I’d not like to repeat, ma’am, until Mr. +McKail stepped out to see what was wrong, and +interfered.”</p> +<p>“<i>How</i> did he interfere?” was my next question.</p> +<p>“By taking the lad into the house, ma’am,” was my +witness’s retarded reply.</p> +<p>“Then what happened?” I exacted.</p> +<p>I waited, knowing what was coming, but I dreaded +to hear it.</p> +<p>“He gave him a threshing, ma’am,” I heard Hilton’s +voice saying, far away, as though it came to me +over a long-distance telephone on a wet night.</p> +<p>I sat rigid as we mounted American Hill. I sat +rigid as we swerved in through the ridiculous manor-like +gate and up the winding drive and in under the +ugly new porte-cochère. I didn’t even wait for +Poppsy as I got out of the car. I didn’t even speak +to Tokudo as he ran mincingly to take my things. I +walked straight to the breakfast-room where I saw +my husband sitting at the end of the oblong white +table, stirring a cup of coffee with a spoon.</p> +<p>“Where’s Dinkie?” I asked, trying to keep my +voice low but not quite succeeding.</p> +<p>Duncan looked up at me with a coldly meditative +eye. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_333' name='page_333'></a>333</span></p> +<p>“Where he usually is at this time of day,” he +finally answered.</p> +<p>“Where?” I repeated.</p> +<p>“At school, of course,” admitted my husband as he +reached out for a piece of buttered toast. He was +making a pretense at being very tranquil-minded. +But his hand, I noticed, wasn’t so steady as it might +have been.</p> +<p>“Is he all right?” I demanded, with my voice rising +in spite of myself.</p> +<p>“Considerably better, I imagine, than he has been +for some time,” was the deliberate answer from the +man with the bloodshot eyes at the end of the table.</p> +<p>“What do you mean by that?” I asked. And any +one of intelligence, I suppose, could see I was making +that question a challenge.</p> +<p>“I mean that since you saw him last he’s had a +damned good whaling,” said Duncan, with his jaw +squared, so that he reminded me of a King-Lud bulldog.</p> +<p>I paid no attention to Tokudo, who came into the +room to repeat that his master was wanted at the +telephone.</p> +<p>“Do you mean you struck that child?” I demanded, +leaning on the table and looking straight +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_334' name='page_334'></a>334</span> +into his eyes, which met mine quite unabashed, and +with an air of mockery about them.</p> +<p>My husband nodded as he pushed back his chair.</p> +<p>“He got a good one,” he asserted as he rose to his +feet and rather leisurely brushed a crumb or two +from his vest-front. He could even afford to smile +as he said it. My expression, I suppose, would have +made any man smile. But there was something maddening +in his mockery, at such a moment. There was +something gratuitously cruel in his parade of unconcern. +Yet, oddly enough, as I looked at his slightly +blotched face I couldn’t help remembering that that +was the face I had once kissed and held close against +my cheek, had <i>wanted</i> to hold against my cheek. And +now I hated it.</p> +<p>I had to wait and cast about for words of hatred +strong enough to carry the arrows of enmity which +nothing could stop me from delivering. But while I +waited Tokudo announced for the third time that my +husband was wanted at the telephone. And a very +simple thing happened. My husband answered his +call.</p> +<p>I saw Duncan turn and walk out of the room. I +could hear his steps in the hallway, loud on the waxed +hardwood and low on the rugs. I could hear his +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_335' name='page_335'></a>335</span> +deliberated chest-tones as he talked over the wire, talked +quietly and earnestly, talked me and my hatred out +of his head and out of his world. And I realized, as I +sat there at the table-end with my gloves twisted up +under my hands and my heart even more twisted up +under my ribs, that it was all useless, that it was all +futile. He was beyond the reach of my resentment. +We were in different worlds, forevermore.</p> +<p>I was still sitting there when he looked in at the +door, with his hat and coat on, on his way out. I +could feel him there, without directly seeing him. +And I could feel, too, that he wanted to say something. +But I declined to lift my head, and I could +hear the door close as he went out to the waiting car.</p> +<p>I sat there for a long time, thinking about my +Dinkie. Twice I almost surrendered to the impulse +to telephone to Lossie Brown. But I knew it would +be no easy matter to get in touch with her. And in +two hours it would be twelve, and any minute after +that my boy would be home again. I tried to cross-examine +Tokudo, but I could get nothing out of that +tight-lipped Jap. I watched the clock. I noticed +Hilton, when he got back, raking blood-stains off the +gravel of the driveway. I wandered about, like a lost +turkey-hen, trying to dramatize my meeting with +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_336' name='page_336'></a>336</span> +Dinkie, doing my best to cooper together some incident +which might keep our first minute or two +together from being too hard on my poor kiddie. I +heard the twelve o’clock whistles, at last, and then +the Westminster-chimes of the over-ornate clock in +the library announce that noon had come. And still +the minutes dragged on.</p> +<p>And when the tension was becoming almost unbearable +I heard a step on the gravel and my heart +started to pound.</p> +<p>But instead of Dinkie, it was Lossie, Lossie with +smiling lips and inquiring brown eyes and splashes of +rose in her cheeks from rapid walking.</p> +<p>“Where’s Dinkie?” I asked.</p> +<p>She stopped short, still smiling.</p> +<p>“That’s exactly what I was going to ask?” I heard +her saying. Then her smile faded as she searched my +face. “There’s—there’s nothing happened, has +there?”</p> +<p>I groped my way to a pillar of the porte-cochère +and leaned against it.</p> +<p>“Didn’t Dinkie come to school this morning?” I +asked as the earth wavered under my feet.</p> +<p>“No,” acknowledged Lossie, still searching my +face. And a frown of perplexity came into her own. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_337' name='page_337'></a>337</span></p> +<p>I knew then what had happened. I knew it even +before I went up to Dinkie’s room and started my +frantic search through his things. I could see that +a number of his more treasured small possessions +were gone. I delved forlornly about, hoping that he +might have left some hidden message for me. But I +could find nothing. I sat looking at his books and +broken toys, at the still open copy of <i>The Count of +Monte Cristo</i> which he must have been poring over +only the night before, at his neatly folded underclothes +and the little row of gravel-worn shoes. They +took on an air of pathos, an atmosphere of the +memorial. Yet, oddly enough, it was Lossie, and +Lossie alone, who broke into tears. The more she +cried, in fact, the calmer I found myself becoming, +though all the while that dead weight of misery was +hanging like lead from my heart.</p> +<p>I went at once to the telephone and called up +Duncan’s office. He was still there, though I had to +wait several minutes before I could get in touch with +him.</p> +<p>I had thought, at first, that he would be offhandedly +skeptical at the message which I was sending +him over the wire, the message that my boy had +run away. He might even be flippantly indifferent, +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_338' name='page_338'></a>338</span> +and remind me that much worse things could have +happened.</p> +<p>But I knew at once that he was genuinely alarmed +at the news which I’d given him. It apparently +staggered him for a moment. Then he said in his +curt telephonic chest-tones, “I’ll be up at the house, +at once.”</p> +<p>He came, before I’d even completed a second and +more careful search. His face was cold and non-committal +enough, but his color was gone and there was +a look that was almost one of contrition in his +troubled eyes, which seemed unwilling to meet mine. +He questioned Lossie and cross-examined Hilton and +Tokudo, and then called up the Chief of Police. Then +he telephoned to the different railway stations, and +carried Lossie off in the car to the McArthurs’, to +interview Benny, and came back an hour later with +that vague look of frustration still on his face.</p> +<p>He sat down to luncheon, but he ate very little. +He was silent for quite a long time.</p> +<p>“Your boy’s all right,” he said in a much softer +voice than I had expected from him. “He’s big +enough to look after himself. And we’ll be on his +trail before nightfall. He can’t go far.”</p> +<p>“No; he can’t go far,” I echoed, trying to fortify +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_339' name='page_339'></a>339</span> +myself with the knowledge that he must have taken +little more than a dollar from the gilded cast-iron +elephant which he used as a bank.</p> +<p>“I don’t want this to get in the papers,” explained +my husband. “It’s—it’s all so ridiculous. I’ve put +Kearney and two of his men on the job. He’s a +private detective, and he’ll keep busy until he gets the +boy back.”</p> +<p>Duncan got up from the table, rather heavily. He +stood hesitating a moment and then stepped closer +to my chair.</p> +<p>“I know it’s hard,” he said as he put a hand on my +shoulder. “But it’ll be all right. We’ll get your +boy back for you.”</p> +<p>I didn’t speak, because I knew that if I spoke I’d +break down and make an idiot of myself. My husband +waited, apparently expecting me to say something. +Then he took his hand away.</p> +<p>“I’ll get busy with the car,” he said with a forced +matter-of-factness, “and let you know when there’s +any news. I’ve wired Buckhorn and sent word to +Casa Grande—and we ought to get some news from +there.”</p> +<p>But there was no news. The afternoon dragged +away and the house seemed like a tomb. And at five +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_340' name='page_340'></a>340</span> +o’clock I did what I had wanted to do for six long +hours. I sent off a forty-seven word telegram to +Peter Ketley, telling him what had happened....</p> +<p>Duncan came back, at seven o’clock, to get one of +the new photographs of Dinkie and Lossie for identification +purposes. They had rounded up a small boy +at Morley and Kearney was motoring out to investigate. +We’d know by midnight....</p> +<p>It is well after midnight, and Duncan has just +had a phone-message from Morley. The little chap +they had rounded up was a Barnado boy fired with +a sudden ambition to join his uncle in the gold-fields +of Australia. Somewhere, in the blackness of this +big night, my homeless Dinkie is wandering unguarded +and alone.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_341' name='page_341'></a>341</span> +<a name='FRIDAY_THE_TWENTYNINTH' id='FRIDAY_THE_TWENTYNINTH'></a> +<h2><i>Friday the Twenty-Ninth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I have had no word from Peter.... I’ve had no +news to end the ache that pins me like a spear-head +to the wall of hopelessness. Duncan, I know, is doing +all he can. But there is so little to do. And this +world of ours, after all, is such a terrifyingly big one.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_342' name='page_342'></a>342</span> +<a name='SATURDAY_THE_THIRTIETH' id='SATURDAY_THE_THIRTIETH'></a> +<h2><i>Saturday the Thirtieth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I was called to the phone before breakfast this +morning and it was the blessed voice of Peter I heard +from the other end of the wire. My telegram had +got out to him from Buckhorn a day late. But he +had no definite news for me. He was quite fixed in +his belief, however, that Dinkie would be bobbing up +at his old home in a day or two.</p> +<p>“The boy will travel this way,” he assured me. +“He’s bound to do that. It’s as natural as water +running down-hill!”</p> +<p>Duncan asked me whom I’d been talking to, and +I had to tell him. His face clouded and the familiar +quick look of resentment came into his eyes.</p> +<p>“I can’t see what that Quaker’s got to do with this +question,” he barked out. But I held my peace.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_343' name='page_343'></a>343</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_FIRST' id='SUNDAY_THE_FIRST'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the First</i></h2> +</div> +<p>I have found a message from my Dinkie. I came +across it this morning, by accident. It was in my +sewing-basket, the basket made of birch-bark and +stained porcupine quills and lined with doe-skin, +which I’d once bought from a Reservation squaw in +Buckhorn with a tiny papoose on her back. Duncan +had upbraided me for passing out my last five-dollar +bill to that hungry Nitchie, but the poor woman +needed it.</p> +<p>My fingers were shaking as I unfolded the note. +And written there in the script I knew so well I read:</p> +<p style='margin-left:1.0em; margin-right:1.0em; '>“Darligest Mummsey:</p> +<p style='margin-left:1.0em; margin-right:1.0em; '>I am going away. But dont worry about me for +I will be alright. I couldn’t stay Mummsey after +what hapened. Some day I will come back to you. +But I’m not as bad as all that. I’ll love you always +as much as ever. I can take care for myself so don’t +worry, please. And please feed my two rabits reglar +and tell Benny I’ll save his jacknife and rember +every day I’m rembering you. X X X X X X X</p> +<p style='margin-left:1.0em; margin-right:1.0em; '>Your aff’cte son,</p> +<p style='margin-left:1.0em; margin-right:1.0em; text-align:right'><span style='font-variant:small-caps'>Dinkie</span>.”<br /></p> +<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_344' name='page_344'></a>344</span></div> +<p>It seemed like a voice from the dead, it was bittersweet +consolation, and, in a way, it stood redemption +of Dinkie himself. I’d been upbraiding him, in my +secret heart of hearts, for his silence to his mother. +That’s a streak of his father in him, had been my +first thought, that unthinking cruelty which didn’t +take count of the anguish of others. But he hadn’t +forgotten me. Whatever happens, I have at least +this assuaging secret message from my son. And +some day he’ll come back to me. “Ye winna leave me +for a’, laddie?” I keep saying, in the language of old +Whinstane Sandy. And my mind goes back, almost +six years at a bound, to the time he was lost on the +prairie. That time, I tell myself, God was good to +me. And surely He will be good to me again!</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_345' name='page_345'></a>345</span> +<a name='TUESDAY_THE_THIRD' id='TUESDAY_THE_THIRD'></a> +<h2><i>Tuesday the Third</i></h2> +</div> +<p>We still have no single word of our laddie.... +They all tell me not to worry. But how can a mother +keep from worrying? I had rather an awful nightmare +last night, dreaming that Dinkie was trying to +climb the stone wall about our place. He kept falling +back with bleeding fingers, and he kept calling and +calling for his mother. Without being quite awake +I went down to the door in my night-gown, and +opened it, and called out into the darkness: “Is anybody +there? Is it you, Dinkie?”</p> +<p>My husband came down and led me back to bed, +with rather a frightened look on his face.</p> +<p>They tell me not to worry, but I’ve been up in +Dinkie’s room turning over his things and wondering +if he’s dead, or if he’s fallen into the hands of cruel +people who would ill-use a child. Or perhaps he has +been stolen by Indians, and will come back to me with +a morose and sullen mind, and with scars on his +body....</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_346' name='page_346'></a>346</span> +<a name='THURSDAY_THE_FIFTH' id='THURSDAY_THE_FIFTH'></a> +<h2><i>Thursday the Fifth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>What a terrible thing is loneliness. The floors of +Hell, I’m sure, are paved with lonesome hearts. Day +by day I wait and long for my laddie. Always, at +the back of my brain, is that big want. Day by day +I brood about him and night by night I dream of him. +I turn over his old playthings and his books, and my +throat gets tight. I stare at the faded old snap-shots +of him, and my heart turns to lead. I imagine +I hear his voice, just outside the door, or just beyond +a bend in the road, and a two-bladed sword of pain +pushes slowly through my breast-bone. Dear old +Lossie comes twice a day, and does her best to cheer +me up. And Gershom has offered to give up his +school and join in the search. Peter Ketley, he tells +me, has been on the road for a week, in a car covered +with mud and clothes that have never come off.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_347' name='page_347'></a>347</span> +<a name='FRIDAY_THE_SIXTH' id='FRIDAY_THE_SIXTH'></a> +<h2><i>Friday the Sixth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>There is no news of my Dinkie. And <i>that</i>, I +remind myself, is the only matter that counts.</p> +<p>Lois Murchison drove up to-day in her hateful big +car. She did not find me a very agreeable hostess, +I’m afraid, but curled up like a nonchalant green +snake in one of my armchairs and started to smoke +and talk. She asked where Duncan was and I had +to explain that he’d been called out to the mines on +imperative business. And that started her going on +the mines. Duncan, she said, should clean up half +a million before he was through with that deal. He +had been very successful.</p> +<p>“But don’t you feel, my dear,” she went on with +quiet venom in her voice, “that a great deal of his +success has depended on that bandy-legged little she-secretary +of his?”</p> +<p>“Is she that wonderful?” I asked, trying to seem +less at sea than I was.</p> +<p>“She’s certainly wonderful to him!” announced the +woman known as Slinkie. And having driven that +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_348' name='page_348'></a>348</span> +poisoned dart well into the flesh, she was content to +drop her cigarette-end into the ash-receiver, reach for +her blue-fox furs, and announce that she’d have to +be toddling on to the hair-dresser’s.</p> +<p>Lois Murchison’s implication, at that moment, +didn’t bother me much, for I had bigger troubles to +occupy my thoughts. But the more I dwell on it, +the more I find myself disturbed in spirit. I resent +the idea of being upset by a wicked-tongued woman. +She has, however, raised a ghost which will have to +be laid. To-morrow I intend to go down to my husband’s +office and see his secretary, “to inspect the +whaup,” as Whinnie would express it, for I find +myself becoming more and more interested in her +wonderfulness.... Peter sent me a hurried line or +two to-day, telling me to sit tight as he thought he’d +have news for me before the week was out.</p> +<p>I suspect him of trying to trick me into some forlorn +new lease of hope. But I have pinned my faith +to Peter—and I know he would not trifle with anything +so sacred as mother-love.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_349' name='page_349'></a>349</span> +<a name='SATURDAY_THE_SEVENTH' id='SATURDAY_THE_SEVENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Saturday the Seventh</i></h2> +</div> +<p>There is no news of my Dinkie.... But there is +news of another nature.</p> +<p>Between ten and eleven this morning I had Hilton +motor me down to Duncan’s office in Eighth Avenue. +It struck me as odd, at first, that I had never been +there before. But Duncan, I remembered, had never +asked me, the domestic fly, to step into his spider’s +parlor of commerce. And I found a ridiculous +timidity creeping over me as I went up in the elevator, +and found the door-number, and saw myself +confronted by a cadaverous urchin in horn-rimmed +specs, who thrust a paper-covered novel behind his +chair-back and asked me what I wanted. So I asked +him if this was Mr. McKail’s office.</p> +<p>“Sure,” he said in the established vernacular of +the West.</p> +<p>“What is your name, little boy?” I inquired, +with the sternest brand of condescension I could command.</p> +<p>The young monkey drew himself up at that and +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_350' name='page_350'></a>350</span> +flushed angrily. “Oh, I don’t know as I’m so little,” +he observed, regarding me with a narrowing eye as +I stepped unbidden beyond the sacred portals.</p> +<p>“Where will I find Mr. McKail’s secretary?” I +asked, noticing the door in the stained-wood partition +with “Private” on its frosted glass. The youth +nodded his head toward the door in question and +crossed to a desk where he proceeded languidly to +affix postage-stamps to a small pile of envelopes.</p> +<p>I hesitated for a moment, as though there was +something epochal in the air, as though I was making +a step which might mean a great deal to me. And +then I stepped over to the door and opened it.</p> +<p>I saw a young woman seated at a flat-topped desk, +with a gold-banded fountain-pen in her fingers, checking +over a column of figures. She checked carefully +on to the end of her column, and then she raised her +head and looked at me.</p> +<p>Her face stood out with singular distinctness, in +the strong side-light from the office-window. And +the woman seated at the flat-topped desk was Alsina +Teeswater.</p> +<p>I don’t know how long I stood there without speaking. +But I could see the color slowly mount and +recede on Alsina Teeswater’s face. She put down +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_351' name='page_351'></a>351</span> +her fountain-pen, with much deliberation, and sat +upright in her chair, with her barricaded eyes every +moment of the time on my face.</p> +<p>“So this has started again?” I finally said, in little +more than a whisper.</p> +<p>I could see the girl’s lips harden. I could see her +fortifying herself behind an entrenchment of quietly +marshaled belligerency.</p> +<p>“It has never stopped, Mrs. McKail,” she said in +an equally low voice, but with the courage of utter +desperation.</p> +<p>It took some time, apparently, for that declaration +to filter through to my brain. Everything +seemed suddenly out of focus; and it was hard to readjust +vision to the newer order of things. But I was +calmer, under the circumstances, than I expected to be.</p> +<p>“I’m glad I understand,” I finally admitted.</p> +<p>The woman at the desk seemed puzzled. Then she +looked from me to her column of figures and from her +column of figures to the huddled roofs and walls of +the city and the greening foot-hills and the solemn +white crowns of the Rockies behind them.</p> +<p>“Are you quite sure, Mrs. McKail, that you do +understand?” she asked at last, with just a touch of +challenge in the question. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_352' name='page_352'></a>352</span></p> +<p>“Isn’t it quite simple now?” I demanded.</p> +<p>She found the courage to face me again.</p> +<p>“I don’t think this sort of thing is ever simple,” +she replied, with much more emotion than I had expected +of her.</p> +<p>“But it’s at least clear how it must end,” I found +the courage to point out to her.</p> +<p>“Is that clear to <i>you</i>?” demanded the woman who +was stepping into my shoes. It seemed odd, at the +moment, that I should feel vaguely sorry for her.</p> +<p>“Perhaps you might make it clearer,” I prompted.</p> +<p>“I’d rather Duncan did that,” she replied, using +my husband’s first name, obviously, without knowing +she had done so.</p> +<p>“Wouldn’t it be fairer—for the two of us—now? +Wouldn’t it be cleaner?” I rather tremulously asked +of her.</p> +<p>She nodded and stared down at the sheet covered +with small columns of figures.</p> +<p>“I don’t know whether you know it or not,” she +said with a studied sort of quietness, “but last week +Mr. McKail began making arrangements to establish +a residence in Nevada. He will have to live there, of +course, for at least six months, perhaps even longer.”</p> +<p>I could feel this sinking in, like water going +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_353' name='page_353'></a>353</span> +through blotting-paper. The woman at the desk +must have misinterpreted my silence, for she was +moved to say, in a heavier effort at self-defense, “He +<i>knew</i>, of course, that you cared for some one else.”</p> +<p>I looked at her, as though she were a thousand +miles away. I stood there impressed by the utter +inadequacy of speech. And the thing that puzzled +me was that there was an air of honesty about the +woman. She still so desperately clung to her self-respect +that she wanted me to understand both her +predicament and her motives. I could hear her explaining +that my husband had no intention of going +to Reno, but would live in Virginia City, where he +was taking up some actual mining interests. Such +things were not pleasant, of course. But this one +could be put through without difficulty. Mr. McKail +had been assured of that.</p> +<p>I tried to pull myself together, wondering why I +should so suddenly feel like a marked woman, a +pariah of the prairies, as friendless and alone as a +leper. Then I thought of my children. And that +cleared my head, like a wind sweeping clean a smoky +room.</p> +<p>“But a case has to be made out,” I began. “It +would have to be proved that I––” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_354' name='page_354'></a>354</span></p> +<p>“There will be no difficulty on that point, Mrs. McKail,” +went on the other woman as I came to a +stop. “Provided the suit is not opposed.”</p> +<p>The significance of that quietly uttered phrase did +not escape me. Our glances met and locked.</p> +<p>“There are the children,” I reminded her. And +she looked a very commercialized young lady as she +sat confronting me across her many columns of +figures.</p> +<p>“There should be no difficulty there—<i>provided</i> the +suit is not opposed,” she repeated with the air of a +physician confronted by a hypochondriacal patient.</p> +<p>“The children are mine,” I rather foolishly proclaimed, +with my first touch of passion.</p> +<p>“The children are yours,” she admitted. And +about her hung an air of authority, of cool reserve, +which I couldn’t help resenting.</p> +<p>“That is very generous of you,” I admitted, not +without ironic intent.</p> +<p>She smiled rather sadly as she sat looking at me.</p> +<p>“It’s something that doesn’t rest with either of +us,” she said with the suspicion of a quaver in her +voice. And <i>she</i>, I suddenly remembered, might some +day sit eating her pot of honey on a grave. I realized, +too, that very little was to be gained by +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_355' name='page_355'></a>355</span> +prolonging that strangest of interviews. I wanted +quietude in which to think things over. I wanted to +go back to my cell like a prisoner and brood over +my sentence....</p> +<p>And I have thought things over. I at last see the +light. From this day forward there shall be no +vacillating. I am going back to Casa Grande.</p> +<p>I have always hated this house; I have always +hated everything about the place, without having the +courage to admit it. I have done my part, I have +made my effort, and it was a wasted effort. I wasn’t +even given a chance. And now I shall gather my +things together and go back to my home, to the only +home that remains to me. I shall still have my kiddies. +I shall have my Poppsy and—But sharp as an +arrow-head the memory of my lost boy strikes into +my heart. My Dinkie is gone. I no longer have him +to make what is left of my life endurable....</p> +<p>It is raining to-night, I notice, steadily and dismally. +It is a dark night, outside, for lost children....</p> +<p>Duncan has just come home, wet and muddy, and +gone up to his room. The gray-faced solemnity with +which he strode past me makes me feel sure that he +has been conversing with his lady-love. But what +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_356' name='page_356'></a>356</span> +difference does it make? What difference does <i>anything</i> +make? In the matter of women, I have just +remembered, what may be one man’s meat is another +man’s poison. But I can’t understand these reversible +people, like house-rugs, who can pretend to love two +ways at once.... I only know one man, in all the +wide world, who has not shattered my faith in his +kind. He is one of those neck-or-nothing men who +never change.</p> +<p>There are many ranchers, out in this country, who +keep what they call a blizzard-line. It’s a rope that +stretches in winter from their house-door to their +shed or their stable, a rope that keeps them from getting +lost when a blizzard is raging. Peter, I know, +has been my blizzard-line. And in some way, please +God, he will yet lead me back to warmth. He is himself +out there in the cold, accepting it, all the time, +with the same quiet fortitude that a Polar bear +might. But he will thole through, in the end. For +with all his roughness he can be unexpectedly adroit. +Whinstane Sandy once told me something he had +learned about Polar bears in his old Yukon days: +with all their heaviness, they can go where a dog +daren’t venture. If need be, they can flatten out and +slide over a sheet of ice too thin to support a running +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_357' name='page_357'></a>357</span> +dog. And the drift-ice may be widening, but I refuse +to give up my hope of hope. “Let the mother go,” +as the Good Book says, “that it may be well with +thee!” ...</p> +<p>I have just remembered that I tried to shoot my +husband once. He may make use of <i>that</i>, when he +gets down to Virginia City. It might, in fact, help +things along very materially. And Susie’s eyes will +probably pop out, when she reads it in a San Francisco +paper....</p> +<p>I’ve thought of so many clever things I should have +said to Alsina Teeswater. As I look back, I find it +was the other lady who did about all the talking. +There were old ulcerations to be cleared away, of +course, and I let her talk about the same as you let +a dentist work with his fingers in your mouth.... +But now I must go up and make sure my Poppsy is +safely tucked in. I have just opened the door and +looked out. It is storming wretchedly. God pity +any little boys who are abroad on such a night!</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_358' name='page_358'></a>358</span> +<a name='TWO_HOURS_LATER' id='TWO_HOURS_LATER'></a> +<h2><i>Two Hours Later</i></h2> +</div> +<p>It is well past midnight. But there is no sleep this +night for Chaddie McKail. I am too happy to sleep. +I am too happy to act sane. For my boy is safe. +<i>Peter has found my Dinkie!</i></p> +<p>I was called to the telephone, a little after eleven, +but couldn’t hear well on the up-stairs extension, so +I went to the instrument down-stairs, where the +operator told me it was long-distance, from Buckhorn. +So I listened, with my heart in my mouth. But +all I could get was a buzz and crackle and an occasional +ghostly word. It was the storm, I suppose. +Then I heard Peter’s voice, thin and faint and far +away, but most unmistakably Peter’s voice.</p> +<p>“Can you hear me now?” he said, like a man speaking +from the bottom of the sea.</p> +<p>“Yes,” I called back. “What is it?”</p> +<p>“Get ready for good news,” said that thin but +valorous voice that seemed to be speaking from the +tip-top mountains of Mars. But the crackling and +burring cut us off again. Then something must have +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_359' name='page_359'></a>359</span> +happened to the line, or we must have been switched +to a better circuit. For, the next moment, Peter’s +voice seemed almost in the next room. It seemed to +come closer at a bound, like a shore-line when you +look at it through a telescope.</p> +<p>“Is that any better?” he asked through his miles +and miles of rain-swept blackness.</p> +<p>“Yes, I can hear you plainly now,” I told him.</p> +<p>“Ah, yes, that <i>is</i> better,” he acknowledged. “And +everything else is, too, my dear. For I’ve found your +Dinkie and––”</p> +<p>“You’ve found Dinkie?” I gasped.</p> +<p>“I have, thank God. And he’s safe and sound!”</p> +<p>“Where?” I demanded.</p> +<p>“Fast asleep at Alabama Ranch.”</p> +<p>“Is he all right?”</p> +<p>“As fit as a fiddle—all he wants is sleep.”</p> +<p>“<i>Oh, Peter!</i>” It was foolish. But it was all I +could say for a full minute. For my boy was alive, +and safe. My laddie had been found by Peter—by +good old Peter, who never, in the time of need, was +known to fail me.</p> +<p>“Where are you now?” I asked, when reason was +once more on her throne.</p> +<p>“At Buckhorn,” answered Peter. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_360' name='page_360'></a>360</span></p> +<p>“And you went all that way through the mud and +rain, just to tell me?” I said.</p> +<p>“I had to, or I’d blow up!” acknowledged Peter. +“And now I’d like to know what you want me to do.”</p> +<p>“I want you to come and get me, Peter,” I said +slowly and distinctly over the wire.</p> +<p>There was a silence of several seconds.</p> +<p>“Do you understand what that means?” he finally +demanded. His voice, I noticed, had become suddenly +solemn.</p> +<p>“Yes, Peter, I understand,” I told him. “Please +come and get me!” And again the silence was so prolonged +that I had to cut in and ask: “Are you +there?”</p> +<p>And Peter’s voice answered “Yes.”</p> +<p>“Then you’ll come?” I exacted, determined to burn +all my bridges behind me.</p> +<p>“I’ll be there on Monday,” said Peter, with quiet +decision. “I’ll be there with Tithonus and Tumble-Weed +and the old prairie-schooner. And we’ll all +trek home together!”</p> +<p>“<i>Skookum!</i>” I said with altogether unbecoming +levity.</p> +<p>I patted the telephone instrument as I hung up the +receiver. Then I sat staring at it in a brown study. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_361' name='page_361'></a>361</span></p> +<p>Then I went careening up-stairs and woke Poppsy +out of a sound sleep and hugged her until her bones +were ready to crack and told her that our Dinkie had +been found again. And Poppsy, not being quite able +to get it through her sleepy little head, promptly +began to bawl. But there was little to bawl over, once +she was thoroughly awake. And then I went careening +down to the telephone again, and called up +Lossie’s boarding-house, and had her landlady root +the poor girl out of bed, and heard <i>her</i> break down +and have a little cry when I told her our Dinkie had +been found. And the first thing she asked me, when +she was able to talk again, was if Gershom Binks had +been told of the good news. And I had to acknowledge +that I hadn’t even <i>thought</i> of poor old Gershom, +but that Peter Ketley would surely have passed the +good word on to Casa Grande, for Peter always +seemed to think of the right thing.</p> +<p>And then I remembered about Duncan. For Duncan, +whatever he may have been, was still the boy’s +father. And he must be told. It was my duty to tell +him. So once more I climbed the stairs, but this +time more slowly. I had to wait a full minute before +I found the courage, I don’t know why, to knock +on Duncan’s bedroom door. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_362' name='page_362'></a>362</span></p> +<p>I knocked twice before any answer came.</p> +<p>“What is it?” asked the familiar sleepy <i>bass</i>—and +I realized what gulfs yawned between us when my +husband on one side of that closed door could be +lying lost in slumber and I on the other side of it +could find life doing such unparalleled things to me. +I felt for him as a girl home, tired from her first +dance, feels for a young brother asleep beside a +Noah’s Ark.</p> +<p>“What is it?” I heard Duncan’s voice repeating +from the bed.</p> +<p>“It’s me,” I rather weakly proclaimed.</p> +<p>“What has happened?” was the question that came +after a moment’s silence.</p> +<p>I leaned with my face against the painted door-panel. +It was smooth and cool and pleasant to press +one’s skin against.</p> +<p>“They’ve found Dinkie,” I said. I could hear the +squeak of springs as my husband sat up in bed.</p> +<p>“Is he all right?”</p> +<p>“Yes, he’s all right,” I said with a great sigh. And +I listened for an answering sigh from the other side +of the door.</p> +<p>But instead of that Duncan’s voice asked: “Where +is he?” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_363' name='page_363'></a>363</span></p> +<p>“At Alabama Ranch,” I said, without realizing +what that acknowledgment meant. And again a brief +period of silence intervened.</p> +<p>“Who found him?” asked my husband, in a hardened +voice.</p> +<p>“Peter Ketley,” I said, in as collected a voice as I +could manage. And this time the significance of the +silence did not escape me.</p> +<p>“Then your cup of happiness ought to be full,” I +heard the voice on the other side of the door remark +with heavy deliberateness. I stood there with my +face leaning against the cool panel.</p> +<p>“It is,” I said with a quiet audacity which surprised +me almost as much as it must have surprised +the man on the bed a million miles away from me.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_364' name='page_364'></a>364</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_EIGHTH' id='SUNDAY_THE_EIGHTH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Eighth</i></h2> +</div> +<p>How different is life from what the fictioneers +would paint it! How hopelessly mixed-up and +macaronic, how undignified in what ought to be its +big moments and how pompous in so many of its +pettinesses!</p> +<p>I told my husband to-day that Poppsy and I were +going back to Casa Grande. And that, surely, ought +to have been the Big Moment in the career of an +unloved invertebrate. But the situation declined to +take off, as the airmen say.</p> +<p>“I guess that means it’s about time we got unscrambled,” +the man I had once married and lived +with quietly remarked.</p> +<p>“Wasn’t that your intention?” I just as quietly +inquired.</p> +<p>“It’s what I’ve had forced on me,” he retorted, +with a protective hardening of the Holbein-Astronomer +jaw-line.</p> +<p>“I’m sorry,” was all I could find to say.</p> +<p>He turned to the window and stared out at his big +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_365' name='page_365'></a>365</span> +white iron fountain set in his terraced lawn behind +his endless cobble-stone walls. I couldn’t tell, of +course, what he was thinking about. But I myself +was thinking of the past, the irrecoverable past, the +irredeemable past, the singing years of my womanly +youth that seemed to be sealed in a lowered coffin on +which the sheltering earth would soon be heaped, on +which the first clods were already dropping with hollow +sounds. We each seemed afraid to look the other +full in the eyes. So we armored ourselves, as poor +mortals must do, in the helmets of pretended diffidence +and the breast-plates of impersonality.</p> +<p>“How are you going back?” my husband finally +inquired. Whatever ghosts it had been necessary to +lay, I could see, he had by this time laid. He no +longer needed to stare out at the white iron fountain +of which he was so proud.</p> +<p>“I’ve sent for the prairie-schooner,” I told him.</p> +<p>His flush of anger rather startled me.</p> +<p>“Doesn’t that impress you as rather cheaply +theatrical?” he demanded.</p> +<p>“I fancy it will be very comfortable,” I told him, +without looking up. I’d apparently been attributing +to him feelings which, after all, were not so desolating +as I might have wished. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_366' name='page_366'></a>366</span></p> +<p>“Every one to his own taste,” he observed as he +called rather sharply to Tokudo to bring him his +humidor. Then he took out a cigar and lighted it +and ordered the car. And that was the lee and the +long of it. That was the way we faced our Great +Divide, our forked trail that veered off East and +West into infinity!</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_367' name='page_367'></a>367</span> +<a name='THURSDAY_THE_ELEVENTH_1' id='THURSDAY_THE_ELEVENTH_1'></a> +<h2><i>Thursday the Eleventh</i></h2> +</div> +<p>The trek is over. And it was not one of triumph. +For we find ourselves, sometimes, in deeper water +than we imagine. Then we have to choke and gasp +for a while before we can get our breath back.</p> +<p>Peter, in the first place, didn’t appear with the +prairie-schooner. He left that to come later in the +day, with Whinnie and Struthers. He appeared quite +early Monday morning, with fire in his eye, and with +a demand to see the master of the house. Heaven +knows what he had heard, or how he had heard it. +But the two men were having it hot and heavy when +I felt it was about time for me to step into the room. +To be quite frank, I had not expected any such outburst +from Duncan. I knew his feelings were not +involved, and where you have a vacuum it is impossible, +of course, to have an explosion. I interpreted +his resentment as a show of opposition to save his +face. But I was wrong. And I was wrong about +Peter. That mild-eyed man is no plaster saint. He +can fight, if he’s goaded into it, and fight like a bulldog. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_368' name='page_368'></a>368</span> +He was saying a few plain truths to Duncan, +when I stepped into the room, a few plain truths +which took the color out of the Dour Man’s face and +made him shake with anger.</p> +<p>“For two cents,” Duncan was rather childishly +shouting at him, “I’d fill you full of lead!”</p> +<p>“Try it!” said Peter, who wasn’t any too steady +himself. “Try it, and you’d at least end up with +doing something in the open!”</p> +<p>Duncan studied him, like a prize-fighter studying +his waiting opponent.</p> +<p>“You’re a cheap actor,” he finally announced. +“This sort of thing isn’t settled that way, and you +know it.”</p> +<p>“And it’s not going to be settled the way you +intended,” announced Peter Ketley.</p> +<p>“What do you know about my intentions?” demanded +Duncan.</p> +<p>“Much more than you imagine,” retorted Peter. +“I’ve got your record, McKail, and I’ve had it for +three years. I’ve stood by, until now; but the time +has come when I’m going to have a hand in this thing. +And you’re not going to get your freedom by dragging +this woman’s name through a divorce-court. If +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_369' name='page_369'></a>369</span> +there’s any dragging to be done, it’s your carcass +that’s going to be tied to the tail-board!”</p> +<p>Duncan stood studying him with a face cheese-colored +with hate.</p> +<p>“Aren’t you rather double-crossing yourself?” he +mocked.</p> +<p>“I’m not thinking about myself,” said Peter.</p> +<p>“Then what’s prompting all the heroics?” demanded +Duncan.</p> +<p>“For two years and more, McKail,” Peter cried +out as he stepped closer to the other man, “you’ve +given this woman a pretty good working idea of hell. +And I’ve seen enough of it. It’s going to end. It’s +got to end. But it’s not going to end the way you’ve +so neatly figured out!”</p> +<p>“Then how do you propose to end it?” Duncan +demanded, with a sort of second-wind of composure. +But his face was still colorless.</p> +<p>“You’ll see when the time comes,” retorted Peter.</p> +<p>“You may have rather a long wait,” taunted +Duncan.</p> +<p>“I have waited a number of years,” answered the +other man, with a dignity which sent a small thrill up +and down my spine. “And I can wait a number of +years more if I have to.” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_370' name='page_370'></a>370</span></p> +<p>“We all knew, of course, that you were waiting,” +sneered my husband.</p> +<p>Peter turned to fling back an answer to that, but +I stepped between them. I was tired of being haggled +over, like marked-down goods on a bargain-counter. +I was tired of being a passive agent before forces +that seemed stripping me of my last shred of dignity. +I was tired of the shoddiness of the entire shoddy +situation.</p> +<p>And I told them so. I told them I’d no intention of +being bargained over, and that I’d had rather enough +of men for the rest of my natural life, and if Duncan +wanted his freedom he was at liberty to take it without +the slightest opposition from me. And I said a +number of other things, which I have no wish either +to remember or record. But it resulted in Duncan +staring at me in a resurrection-plant sort of way, +and in Peter rather dolorously taking his departure. +I wanted to call him back, but I couldn’t carpenter +together any satisfactory excuse for his coming back, +and I couldn’t see any use in it.</p> +<p>So instead of journeying happily homeward in the +cavernous old prairie-schooner, I felt a bit ridiculous +as Tokudo impassively carried our belongings out to +the canvas-covered wagon and Poppsy and I climbed +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_371' name='page_371'></a>371</span> +aboard. The good citizens of American Hill stared +after us as we rumbled down through the neatly +boulevarded streets, and I felt suspiciously like a +gypsy-queen who’d been politely requested by the +local constabulary to move on.</p> +<p>It wasn’t until we reached the open country that +my spirits revived. Then the prairie seemed to reach +out its hand to me and give me peace. We camped, +that first night, in the sheltering arm of a little coulée +threaded by a tiny stream. We cooked bacon and +eggs and coffee while Whinnie out-spanned his team +and put up his tent.</p> +<p>I sat on an oat-sack, after supper, with Poppsy +between my knees, watching the evening stars come +out. They were worlds, I remembered, some of them +worlds perhaps with sorrowing men and women on +them. And they seemed very lonely and far-away +worlds, until I heard the drowsy voice of my Poppsy +say up through the dusk: “In two days more, +Mummy, we’ll be back to Dinkie, won’t we?”</p> +<p>And there was much, I remembered, for which a +mother should be thankful.</p> +<hr class='major' /> +<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_372' name='page_372'></a>372</span> +<a name='SUNDAY_THE_FOURTEENTH' id='SUNDAY_THE_FOURTEENTH'></a> +<h2><i>Sunday the Fourteenth</i></h2> +</div> +<p><i>Dark, and true, and tender is the North.</i> Heaven +bless the rhymster who first penned those words. +Spring is stealing hack to the prairie, and our world +is a world of beauty. The sky to-day is windrowed +with flat-bottomed cumulus-clouds, tier beyond tier +above a level plane of light, marking off the infinite +distance like receding mile-stones on a world turned +over on its back. Occasionally the outstretched head +of a wild duck, pumping north with a black throb of +wings, melts away to a speck in the opaline air. Back +among the muskeg reeds the waders are courting and +chattering, and early this morning I heard the +plaintive winnowing call-note of the Wilson snipe, and +later the <i>punk-e-lunk</i> love-cry of a bittern to his +mate. There’s an eagle planing in lazy circles high +in the air, even now, putting a soft-pedal on the noise +of the coots and grebes as he circles over their rush-lined +cabarets. And somewhere out on the range a +bull is lowing. It is the season of love and the season +of happiness. Dinkie and Poppsy and I are going +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_373' name='page_373'></a>373</span> +out to gather prairie-crocuses. They are thick now +in the prairie-sod, soft blue and lavender and sometimes +mauve. We must dance to the vernal saraband +while we can: Spring is so short in this norland country +of ours. It comes late. But as Peter says, A +late spring never deceives....</p> +<p>I thought I had offended Peter for life. But when +he appeared late this afternoon and I asked him why +he had kept away from me, he said these first few +days naturally belonged to Dinkie and he’d been busy +studying marsh-birds. He looked rather rumpled +and muddy, and impressed me as a man sadly in need +of a woman to look after his things.</p> +<p>“Let’s ride,” said Peter. “I want to talk to you.”</p> +<p>I was afraid of that talk, but I was more afraid +something might happen to interfere with it. So I +changed into my old riding-duds and put on my +weather-stained old sombrero and we saddled Buntie +and Laughing-Gas and went loping off over the sun-washed +prairie with our shadows behind us.</p> +<p>We rode a long way before Peter said anything. I +wanted to be happy, but I wasn’t quite able to be. I +tried to think of neither the past nor the future, but +there were too many ghosts of other days loping +along the trail beside us. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_374' name='page_374'></a>374</span></p> +<p>“What are you going to do?” Peter finally inquired.</p> +<p>“About what?” I temporized as he pulled up beside +me.</p> +<p>“About everything,” he ungenerously responded.</p> +<p>“I don’t know what to do, Peter,” I had to acknowledge. +“I’m like a barrel without hoops. I +want to stick together, but one more thump will +surely send me to pieces!”</p> +<p>“Then why not get the hoops around?” suggested +Peter.</p> +<p>“But where will I get the hoops?” I asked.</p> +<p>“Here,” he said. He was, I noticed, holding out +his arms. And I laughed, even though my heart was +heavy.</p> +<p>“Men have been a great disappointment to me, +Peter,” I said with a shake of my sombrero.</p> +<p>“Try me,” suggested Peter.</p> +<p>But still again I had to shake my head.</p> +<p>“That wouldn’t be fair, Peter,” I told him. “I +can’t spoil your life to see what’s left of my own +patched up.”</p> +<p>“Then you’re going to spoil two of ’em!” he +promptly asserted.</p> +<p>“But I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” I did +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_375' name='page_375'></a>375</span> +my best to explain to him. “I’ve had my innings, and +<i>I’m out</i>. I’ve a one-way heart, the same as a one-way +street. I don’t think there’s anything in the +world more odious than promiscuity. That’s a big +word, but it stands for an even bigger offense against +God. I’ve always said I intended to be a single-track +woman.”</p> +<p>“But your track’s blown up,” contended Peter.</p> +<p>“Then I’ll have to lay me a new one,” I said with +a fine show of assurance.</p> +<p>“And do you know where it will lead?” he demanded,</p> +<p>“Where?” I asked.</p> +<p>“Straight to me,” he said as he studied me with +eyes that were so quiet and kind I could feel a flutter +of my heart-wings.</p> +<p>But still again I shook my head.</p> +<p>“That would be bringing you nothing but a +withered up old has-been,” I said with a mock-wail +of misery.</p> +<p>And Peter actually laughed at that.</p> +<p>“It’ll be a good ten years before you’ve even grown +up,” he retorted. “And another twenty years before +you’ve really settled down!” +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_376' name='page_376'></a>376</span></p> +<p>“You’re saying I’ll never have sense,” I objected. +“And I know you’re right.”</p> +<p>“That’s what I love about you,” averred Peter.</p> +<p>“What you love about me?” I demanded.</p> +<p>“Yes,” he said with his patient old smile, “your +imperishable youthfulness, your eternal never-ending +eternity-defying golden-tinted girlishness!”</p> +<p>A flute began to play in my heart. And I knew +that like Ulysses’s men I would have to close my ears +to it. But it’s easier to row past an island than to +run away from your own heart.</p> +<p>“I know it’s a lie, Peter, but I love you for saying +it. It makes me want to hug you, and it makes me +want to pirouette, if I wasn’t on horseback. It +makes my heart sing. But it’s only the singing of +one lonely little chickadee in the middle of a terribly +big pile of ruins. For that’s all my life can be now, +just a hopeless smash-up. And you’re cut out for +something better than a wrecking-car for the rest of +your days.”</p> +<p>“No, no,” protested Peter. “It’s <i>you</i> who’ve got +to save <i>me</i>.”</p> +<p>“Save you?” I echoed.</p> +<p>“You’ve got to give me something to live for, or +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_377' name='page_377'></a>377</span> +I’ll just rust away in the ditch and never get back to +the rails again.”</p> +<p>“Peter!” I cried.</p> +<p>“What?” he asked.</p> +<p>“You’re not playing fair. You’re trying to make +me pity you.”</p> +<p>“Well, don’t you?” demanded Peter.</p> +<p>“I would if I saw you sacrificing your life for a +woman with a crazy-quilt past.”</p> +<p>“I’m not thinking of the past,” asserted Peter, +“I’m thinking of the future.”</p> +<p>“That’s just it,” I tried to explain. “I’ll have to +face that future with a clouded name. I’ll be a +divorced woman. Ugh! I always thought of divorced +women as something you wouldn’t quite care to sit +next to at table. I hate divorce.”</p> +<p>“I’m a Quaker myself,” acknowledged Peter. “But +I occasionally think of what Cobbett once said: ‘I +don’t much like weasels. Yet I hate rats. Therefore +I say success to the weasels!’”</p> +<p>“I don’t see what weasels have to do with it,” I +complained.</p> +<p>“Putting one’s house in order again may sometimes +be as beneficent as surgery,” contended Peter.</p> +<p>“And sometimes as painful,” I added. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_378' name='page_378'></a>378</span></p> +<p>“Yet there’s no mistake like not cleaning up old +mistakes.”</p> +<p>“But I hate it,” I told him. “It all seems so—so +cheap.”</p> +<p>“On the contrary,” corrected Peter, “it’s rather +costly.” He pulled up across my path and made me +come to a stop. “My dear,” he said, very solemn +again, “I know the stuff you’re made of. I know +you’ve got to climb to the light by a path of your +own choosing. And you have to see the light with +your own eyes. But I’m willing to wait. I <i>have</i> +waited, a very long time. But there’s one fact you’ve +got to face: I love you too much ever to dream of +giving you up.”</p> +<p>I don’t think either of us moved for a full moment. +The flute was singing so loud in my heart that I was +afraid of myself. And, woman-like, I backed away +from the thing I wanted.</p> +<p>“It’s not <i>me</i>, Peter, I must remember now. It’s my +bairns. I’ve two bairns to bring up.”</p> +<p>“I’ve got the three of you to bring up,” maintained +Peter. And that made us both sit silent for another +moment or two.</p> +<p>“It’s not that simple,” I finally said, though Peter +smiled guardedly at my ghost of a smile. +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_379' name='page_379'></a>379</span></p> +<p>“It would be if you cared for me as much as Dinkie +does,” he said with quite unnecessary solemnity.</p> +<p>“Oh, Peter, I do, I do,” I cried out as the memory +of all I owed him surged mistily through my mind. +“But a gray hair is something you can’t joke away. +And I’ve got five of them, right here over my left ear. +I found them, months ago. And they’re there to +stay!”</p> +<p>“How about my bald spot?” demanded my oppressor +and my deliverer rolled into one.</p> +<p>“What’s a bald spot compared to a bob-cat of a +temper like mine?” I challenged, remembering how +I’d once heard a revolver-hammer snap in my husband’s +face.</p> +<p>“But it’s your spirit I like,” maintained the unruffled +Peter.</p> +<p>“You wouldn’t always,” I reminded him.</p> +<p>Yet he merely looked at me with his trust-me-and-test-me +expression.</p> +<p>“I’ll chance it!” he said, after a quite contented +moment or two of meditative silence.</p> +<p>“But don’t you see,” I went forlornly arguing on, +“it mustn’t be a chance. That’s something people of +our age can never afford to take.”</p> +<p>And Peter, at that, for some reason I couldn’t +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_380' name='page_380'></a>380</span> +fathom, began to wag his head. He did it slowly and +lugubriously, like a man who inspects a road he has +no liking for. But at the same time, apparently, he +was finding it hard to tuck away a small smile of +triumph.</p> +<p>“Then we must never see each other again,” he +solemnly asserted.</p> +<p>“Peter!” I cried.</p> +<p>“I must go away, at once,” he meditatively observed.</p> +<p>“<i>Peter!</i>” I said again, with the flute turning into +a pair of ice-tongs that clamped into the corners of +my heart.</p> +<p>“Far, far away,” he continued as he studiously +avoided my eye. “For there will be safety now only +in flight.”</p> +<p>“Safety from what?” I demanded.</p> +<p>“From you,” retorted Peter.</p> +<p>“But what will happen to <i>me</i>, if you do that?” I +heard my own voice asking as Buntie started to paw +the prairie-floor and I did my level best to fight down +the black waves of desolation that were half-drowning +me. “What’ll there be to hold me up, when you’re +the only man in all this world who can keep my barrel +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_381' name='page_381'></a>381</span> +of happiness from going slap-bang to pieces? +What––?”</p> +<p>“<i>Verboten!</i>” interrupted Peter. But that solemn-soft +smile of his gathered me in and covered me, very +much as the rumpled feathers of a mother-bird cover +her young, her crazily twittering and crazily wandering +young who never know their own mind.</p> +<p>“What’ll happen to me,” I went desperately on, +“when you’re the only man alive who understands this +crazy old heart of mine, when you’ve taught me to +hitch the last of my hope on the one unselfish man +I’ve ever known?”</p> +<p>This seemed to trouble Peter. But only remotely, +as the lack of grammar in the Lord’s Prayer might +affect a Holy Roller. He insisted, above all things, +on being judicial.</p> +<p>“Then I’ll have to come back, I suppose,” he finally +admitted, “for Dinkie’s sake.”</p> +<p>“Why for Dinkie’s sake?” I asked.</p> +<p>“Because some day, my dear, our Dinkie is going +to be a great man. And I want to have a hand in +fashioning that greatness.”</p> +<p>I sat looking at the red ball of the sun slipping +down behind the shoulder of the world. A wind came +out of the North, cool and sweet and balsamic with +<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_382' name='page_382'></a>382</span> +hope. I heard a loon cry. And then the earth was +still again.</p> +<p>“<i>We’ll be waiting</i>,” I said, with a tear of happiness +tickling the bridge of my nose. And then, so that +Peter might not see still another loon crying, I swung +Buntie sharply about on the trail. And we rode +home, side by side, through the twilight.</p> +<p style='text-align:center; margin-top:1.5em; margin-bottom:2em;'>THE END</p> + +<!-- generated by ppg.rb version: 0.21c --> +<!-- timestamp: Mon Apr 06 11:45:55 -0600 2009 --> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prairie Child, by Arthur Stringer + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRAIRIE CHILD *** + +***** This file should be named 28514-h.htm or 28514-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/8/5/1/28514/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Prairie Child + +Author: Arthur Stringer + +Illustrator: E. F. Ward + +Release Date: April 6, 2009 [EBook #28514] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRAIRIE CHILD *** + + + + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: We gathered wood and made a fire] + + + + +THE PRAIRIE CHILD + +By ARTHUR STRINGER + +Author of + +"Are All Men Alike and the Lost Titian," "The Prairie Mother," +"The Prairie Wife," "The Wine of Life," "The Door of Dread," +"The Man Who Couldn't Sleep," etc. + +[Illustration] + +With Frontispiece by + +E. F. WARD + +A. L. BURT COMPANY + +Publishers New York + +Published by arrangement with The Bobbs-Merrill Company + +Printed in U. S. A. + + + + +Copyright 1922 + +The Pictorial Review Company + +Copyright 1922 + +The Bobbs-Merrill Company + +Printed in the United States of America + + + + +THE PRAIRIE CHILD + + + + +_Friday the Eighth of March_ + + +"But the thing I can't understand, Dinky-Dunk, is how you ever +_could_." + +"Could what?" my husband asked in an aerated tone of voice. + +I had to gulp before I got it out. + +"Could kiss a woman like that," I managed to explain. + +Duncan Argyll McKail looked at me with a much cooler eye than I had +expected. If he saw my shudder, he paid no attention to it. + +"On much the same principle," he quietly announced, "that the Chinese +eat birds' nests." + +"Just what do you mean by that?" I demanded, resenting the fact that +he could stand as silent as a December beehive before my morosely +questioning eyes. + +"I mean that, being married, you've run away with the idea that all +birds' nests are made out of mud and straw, with possibly a garnish +of horse hairs. But if you'd really examine these edible nests you'd +find they were made of surprisingly appealing and succulent tendrils. +They're quite appetizing, you may be sure, or they'd never be eaten!" + +I stood turning this over, exactly as I've seen my Dinkie turn over an +unexpectedly rancid nut. + +"Aren't you, under the circumstances, being rather stupidly clever?" I +finally asked. + +"When I suppose you'd rather see me cleverly stupid?" he found the +heart to suggest. + +"But that woman, to me, always looked like a frog," I protested, doing +my best to duplicate his pose of impersonality. + +"Well, she doesn't make love like a frog," he retorted with his first +betraying touch of anger. I turned to the window, to the end that my +Eliza-Crossing-the-Ice look wouldn't be entirely at his mercy. A +belated March blizzard was slapping at the panes and cuffing the +house-corners. At the end of a long winter, I knew, tempers were apt +to be short. But this was much more than a matter of barometers. The +man I'd wanted to live with like a second "Suzanne de Sirmont" in +Daudet's _Happiness_ had not only cut me to the quick but was rubbing +salt in the wound. He had said what he did with deliberate intent to +hurt me, for it was only too obvious that he was tired of being on the +defensive. And it did hurt. It couldn't help hurting. For the man, +after all, was my husband. He was the husband to whom I'd given up the +best part of my life, the two-legged basket into which I'd packed all +my eggs of allegiance. And now he was scrambling that precious +collection for a cheap omelette of amorous adventure. He was my +husband, I kept reminding myself. But that didn't cover the entire +case. No husband whose heart is right stands holding another woman's +shoulder and tries to read her shoe-numbers through her ardently +upturned eyes. It shows the wind is not blowing right in the home +circle. It shows a rent in the dyke, a flaw in the blade, a breach in +the fortress-wall of faith. For marriage, to the wife who is a mother +as well, impresses me as rather like the spliced arrow of the +Esquimos: it is cemented together with blood. It is a solemn matter. +And for the sake of _mutter-schutz_, if for nothing else, it must be +kept that way. + +There was a time, I suppose, when the thought of such a thing would +have taken my breath away, would have chilled me to the bone. But I'd +been through my refining fires, in that respect, and you can't burn +the prairie over twice in the same season. I tried to tell myself it +was the setting, and not the essential fact, that seemed so odious. I +did my best to believe it wasn't so much that Duncan Argyll McKail had +stooped to make advances to this bandy-legged she-teacher whom I'd so +charitably housed at Casa Grande since the beginning of the year--for +I'd long since learned not to swallow the antique claim that of all +terrestrial _carnivora_ only man and the lion are truly +monogamous--but more the fact it had been made such a back-stairs +affair with no solitary redeeming touch of dignity. + +Dinky-Dunk, I suppose, would have laughed it away, if I hadn't walked +in on them with their arms about each other, and the bandy-legged one +breathing her capitulating sighs into his ear. But there was +desperation in the eyes of Miss Alsina Teeswater, and it was plain to +see that if my husband had been merely playing with fire it had become +a much more serious matter with the lady in the case. There was, in +fact, something almost dignifying in that strickenly defiant face of +hers. I was almost sorry for her when she turned and walked +white-lipped out of the room. What I resented most, as I stood facing +my husband, was his paraded casualness, his refusal to take a tragic +situation tragically. His attitude seemed to imply that we were about +to have a difference over a small thing--over a small thing with brown +eyes. He could even stand inspecting me with a mildly amused glance, +and I might have forgiven his mildness, I suppose, if it had been +without amusement, and that amusement in some way at my expense. He +even managed to laugh as I stood there staring at him. It was neither +an honest nor a natural laugh. It merely gave me the feeling that he +was trying to entrench himself behind a raw mound of mirth, that any +shelter was welcome until the barrage was lifted. + +"And what do you intend doing about it?" I asked, more quietly than I +had imagined possible. + +"What would you suggest?" he parried, as he began to feel in his +pockets for his pipe. + +And I still had a sense, as I saw the barricaded look come into his +face, of entrenchments being frantically thrown up. I continued to +stare at him as he found his pipe and proceeded to fill it. I even +wrung a ghostly satisfaction out of the discovery that his fingers +weren't so steady as he might have wished them to be. + +"I suppose you're trying to make me feel like the Wicked Uncle edging +away from the abandoned Babes in the Woods?" he finally demanded, as +though exasperated by my silence. He was delving for matches by this +time, and seemed disappointed that none was to be found in his +pockets. I don't know why he should seem to recede from me, for he +didn't move an inch from where he stood with that defensively mocking +smile on his face. But abysmal gulfs of space seemed to blow in like +sea-mists between him and me, desolating and lonely stretches of +emptiness which could never again be spanned by the tiny bridges of +hope. I felt alone, terribly alone, in a world over which the last +fire had swept and the last rains had fallen. My throat tightened and +my eyes smarted from the wave of self-pity which washed through my +body. It angered me, ridiculously, to think that I was going to break +down at such a time. + +But the more I thought over it the more muddled I grew. There was +something maddening in the memory that I was unable to act as my +instincts prompted me to act, that I couldn't, like the outraged wife +of screen and story, walk promptly out of the door and slam it +epochally shut after me. But modern life never quite lives up to its +fiction. And we are never quite free, we women who have given our +hostages to fortune, to do as we wish. We have lives other than our +own to think about. + +"But it's all been so--so _dishonest_!" I cried out, stopping myself +in the middle of a gesture which might have seemed like wringing my +hands. + +That, apparently, gave Dinky-Dunk something to get his teeth into. The +neutral look went out of his eye, to be replaced by a fortifying stare +of enmity. + +"I don't know as it's any more dishonest than the long-distance brand +of the same thing!" + +I knew, at once, what he meant. He meant Peter. He meant poor old +Peter Ketley, whose weekly letter, year in and year out, came as +regular as clockwork to Casa Grande. Those letters came to my son +Dinkie, though it couldn't be denied they carried many a cheering word +and many a companionable message to Dinkie's mother. But it brought me +up short, to think that my own husband would try to play cuttle-fish +with a clean-hearted and a clean-handed man like Peter. The wave that +went through my body, on this occasion, was one of rage. I tried to +say something, but I couldn't. The lion of my anger had me down, by +this time, with his paw on my breast. The power of speech was +squeezed out of my carcass. I could only stare at my husband with a +denuding and devastating stare of incredulity touched with disgust, of +abhorrence skirting dangerously close along the margins of hate. And +he stared back, with morose and watchful defiance on his face. + +Heaven only knows how it would have ended, if that tableau hadn't gone +smash, with a sudden offstage clatter and thump and cry which reminded +me there were more people in the world than Chaddie McKail and her +philandering old husband. For during that interregnum of parental +preoccupation Dinkie and Poppsy had essayed to toboggan down the lower +half of the front-stairs in an empty drawer commandeered from my +bedroom dresser. Their descent, apparently, had been about as +precipitate as that of their equally adventurous sire down the treads +of my respect, for they had landed in a heap on the hardwood floor of +the hall and I found Dinkie with an abraded shin-bone and Poppsy with +a cut lip. My Poppsy was more frightened at the sight of blood than +actually hurt by her fall, and Dinkie betrayed a not unnatural +tendency to enlarge on his injuries in extenuation of his offense. But +that suddenly imposed demand for first-aid took my mind out of the +darker waters in which it had been wallowing, and by the time I had +comforted my kiddies and completed my ministrations Dinky-Dunk had +quietly escaped from the house and my accusatory stares by clapping on +his hat and going out to the stables.... + +And that's the scene which keeps pacing back and forth between the +bars of my brain like a jaguar in a circus-cage. That's the scene I've +been living over, for the last few days, thinking of all the more +brilliant things I might have said and the more expedient things I +might have done. And that's the scene which has been working like +yeast at the bottom of my sodden batter of contentment, making me feel +that I'd swell up and burst, if all that crazy ferment couldn't find +some relief in expression. So after three long years and more of +silence I'm turning back to this, the journal of one irresponsible old +Chaddie McKail, who wanted so much to be happy and who has in some way +missed the pot of gold that they told her was to be found at the +rainbow's end. + +It seems incredible, as I look back, that more than three, long years +should slip away without the penning of one line in this, the +safety-valve of my soul. But the impulse to write rather slipped away +from me. It wasn't that there was so little to record, for life is +always life. But when it burns clearest it seems to have the trick of +consuming its own smoke and leaving so very little ash. The crowded +even tenor of existence goes on, with its tidal ups and downs, too +listlessly busy to demand expression. Then the shock of tempest comes, +and it's only after we're driven out of them that we realize we've +been drifting so long in the doldrums of life. Then it comes home to +us that there are the Dark Ages in the history of a woman exactly as +there were the Dark Ages in the history of Europe. Life goes on in +those Dark Ages, but it doesn't feel the call to articulate itself, to +leave a record of its experiences. And that strikes me, as I sit here +and think of it, as about the deepest tragedy that can overtake +anything on this earth. Nothing, after all, is sadder than silence, +the silence of dead civilizations and dead cities and dead souls. And +nothing is more costly. For beauty itself, in actual life, passes +away, but beauty lovingly recorded by mortal hands endures and goes +down to our children. And I stop writing, at that word of "children," +for miraculously, as I repeat it, I see it cut a window in the +unlighted house of my heart. And that window is the bright little +Gothic oriel which will always be golden and luminous with love and +will always send the last shadow scurrying away from the mustiest +corner of my tower of life. I have my Dinkie and my Poppsy, and +nothing can take them away from me. It's on them that I pin my hope. + + + + +_Sunday the Seventeenth_ + + +I've been thinking a great deal over what's happened this last week or +so. And I've been trying to reorganize my life, the same as you put a +house to rights after a funeral. But it wasn't a well-ordered funeral, +in this case, and I was denied even the tempered satisfaction of the +bereaved after the finality of a smoothly conducted burial. For +nothing has been settled. It's merely that Time has been trying to +encyst what it can not absorb. I felt, for a day or two, that I had +nothing much to live for. I felt like a feather-weight who'd faced a +knock-out. I saw Pride go to the mat, and take the count, and if I was +dazed, for a while, I suppose it was mostly convalescence from shock. +Then I tightened my belt, and reminded myself that it wasn't the first +wallop Fate had given me, and remembered that in this life you have to +adjust yourself to your environment or be eliminated from the game. +And life, I suppose, has tamed me, as a man who once loved me said it +would do. The older I get the more tolerant I try to be, and the more +I know of this world the more I realize that Right is seldom all on +one side and Wrong on the other. It's a matter of give and take, this +problem of traveling in double-harness. I can even smile a little, as +I remember that college day in my teens when Matilda-Anne and Katrina +and Fanny-Rain-in-the-Face and myself solemnly discussed man and his +make-up, over a three-pound box of Maillard's, and resolutely agreed +that we would surrender our hearts to no suitor over twenty-six and +marry no male who'd ever loved another woman--not, at least, unless +the situation had become compensatingly romanticized by the death of +any such lady preceding us in our loved one's favor. Little we knew of +men and ourselves and the humiliations with which life breaks the +spirit of arrogant youth! For even now, knowing what I know, I've been +doing my best to cooper together a case for my unstable old +Dinky-Dunk. I've been trying to keep the thought of poor dead Lady +Alicia out of my head. I've been wondering if there's any truth in +what Dinky-Dunk said, a few weeks ago, about a mere father being like +the male of the warrior-spider whom the female of the species stands +ready to dine upon, once she's assured of her progeny. + +I suppose I _have_ given most of my time and attention to my children. +And it's as perilous, I suppose, to give your heart to a man and then +take it even partly away again as it is to give a trellis to a +rose-bush and then expect it to stand alone. My husband, too, has been +restless and dissatisfied with prairie life during the last year or +so, has been rocking in his own doldrums of inertia where the sight of +even the humblest ship--and the Wandering Sail in this case always +seemed to me as soft and shapeless as a boned squab-pigeon!--could +promptly elicit an answering signal. + +But I strike a snag there, for Alsina has not been so boneless as I +anticipated. There was an unlooked-for intensity in her eyes and a +mild sort of tragedy in her voice when she came and told me that she +was going to another school in the Knee-Hill country and asked if I +could have her taken in to Buckhorn the next morning. Some one, of +course, had to go. There was one too many in this prairie home that +must always remain so like an island dotting the lonely wastes of a +lonely sea. And triangles, oddly enough, seem to flourish best in city +squares. But much as I wanted to talk to Alsina, I was compelled to +respect her reserve. I even told her that Dinkie would miss her a +great deal. She replied, with a choke in her voice, that he was a +wonderful child. That, of course, was music to the ears of his mother, +and my respect for the tremulous Miss Teeswater went up at least ten +degrees. But when she added, without meeting my eye, that she was +really fond of the boy, I couldn't escape the impression that she was +edging out on very thin ice. It was, I think, only the silent misery +in her half-averted face which kept me from inquiring if she hadn't +rather made it a family affair. But that, second thought promptly told +me, would seem too much like striking the fallen. And we both seemed +to feel, thereafter, that silence was best. + +Practically nothing passed between us, in fact, until we reached the +station. I could see that she was dreading the ordeal of saying +good-by. That unnamed sixth sense peculiar to cab-drivers and waiters +and married women told me that every moment on the bald little +platform was being a torture to her. As the big engine came lumbering +up to a standstill she gave me one quick and searching look. It was a +look I shall never forget. For, in it was a question and something +more than a question. An unworded appeal was there, and also an +unworded protest. It got past my outposts of reason, in some way. It +came to me in my bitterness like the smell of lilacs into a sick-room. +I couldn't be cruel to that poor crushed outcast who had suffered +quite as much from the whole ignoble affair as I had suffered. I +suddenly held out my hand to her, and she took it, with that hungry +questioning look still on her face. + +"It's all right," I started to say. But her head suddenly went down +between her hunched-up shoulders. Her body began to shake and tears +gushed from her eyes. I had to help her to the car steps. + +"It was all my fault," she said in a strangled voice, between her +helpless little sobs. + +It was brave of her, of course, and she meant it for the best. But I +wish she hadn't said it. Instead of making everything easier for me, +as she intended, she only made it harder. She left me disturbingly +conscious of ghostly heroisms which transposed what I had tried to +regard as essentially ignoble into some higher and purer key. And she +made it harder for me to look at my husband, when I got home, with a +calm and collected eye. I felt suspiciously like Lady Macbeth after +the second murder. I felt that we were fellow-sharers of a guilty +secret it would never do to drag too often into the light of +every-day life. + +But it will no more stay under cover, I find, than a dab-chick will +stay under water. It bobs up in the most unexpected places, as it did +last night, when Dinkie publicly proclaimed that he was going to marry +his Mummy when he got big. + +"It would be well, my son, not to repeat the mistakes of your father!" +observed Dinky-Dunk. And having said it, he relighted his quarantining +pipe and refused to meet my eye. But it didn't take a surgical +operation to get what he meant into my head. It hurt, in more ways +than one, for it struck me as suspiciously like a stone embodied in a +snowball--and even our offspring recognized this as no fair manner of +fighting. + +"Then it impresses you as a mistake?" I demanded, seeing red, for the +coyote in me, I'm afraid, will never entirely become house-dog. + +"Isn't that the way you regard it?" he asked, inspecting me with a +non-committal eye. + +I had to bite my lip, to keep from flinging out at him the things that +were huddled back in my heart. But it was no time for making big war +medicine. So I got the lid on, and held it there. + +"My dear Dinky-Dunk," I said with an effort at a gesture of weariness, +"I've long since learned that life can't be made clean, like a cat's +body, by the use of the tongue alone!" + +Dinky-Dunk did not look at me. Instead, he turned to the boy who was +watching that scene with a small frown of perplexity on his none too +approving face. + +"You go up to the nursery," commanded my husband, with more curtness +than usual. + +But before Dinkie went he slowly crossed the room and kissed me. He +did so with a quiet resoluteness which was not without its tacit touch +of challenge. + +"You may feel that way about the use of the tongue," said my husband +as soon as we were alone, "but I'm going to unload a few things I've +been keeping under cover." + +He waited for me to say something. But I preferred remaining silent. + +"Of course," he floundered on, "I don't want to stop you martyrizing +yourself in making a mountain out of a mole-hill. But I'm getting a +trifle tired of this holier-than-thou attitude. And----" + +"And?" I prompted, when he came to a stop and sat pushing up his +brindled front-hair until it made me think of the Corean lion on the +library mantel, the lion in pottery which we invariably spoke of as +the Dog of Fo. My wintry smile at that resemblance seemed to +exasperate him. + +"What were you going to say?" I quietly inquired. + +"Oh, hell!" he exclaimed, with quite unexpected vigor. + +"I hope the children are out of hearing," I reminded him, +solemn-eyed. + +"Yes, the children!" he cried, catching at the word exactly as a +drowning man catches at a lifebelt. "The children! That's just the +root of the whole intolerable situation. This hasn't been a home for +the last three or four years; it's been nothing but a nursery. And +about all I've been is a retriever for a _creche_, a clod-hopper to +tiptoe about the sacred circle and see to it there's enough flannel to +cover their backs and enough food to put into their stomachs. I'm an +accident, of course, an intruder to be faced with fortitude and borne +with patience." + +"This sounds quite disturbing," I interrupted. "It almost leaves me +suspicious that you are about to emulate the rabbit and devour your +young." + +Dinky-Dunk fixed me with an accusatory finger. + +"And the fact that you can get humor out of it shows me just how far +it has gone," he cried with a bitterness which quickly enough made me +sober again. "And I could stand being deliberately shut out of your +life, and shut out of their lives as far as you can manage it, but I +can't see that it's doing either them or you any particular good." + +"But I am responsible for the way in which those children grow up," I +said, quite innocent of the _double entendre_ which brought a dark +flush to my husband's none too happy face. + +"And I suppose I'm not to contaminate them?" he demanded. + +"Haven't you done enough along that line?" I asked. + +He swung about, at that, with something dangerously like hate on his +face. + +"Whose children are they?" he challenged. + +"You are their father," I quietly acknowledged. It rather startled me +to find Dinky-Dunk regarding himself as a fur coat and my offspring as +moth-eggs which I had laid deep in the pelt of his life, where we were +slowly but surely eating the glory out of that garment and leaving it +as bald as a prairie dog's belly. + +"Well, you give very little evidence of it!" + +"You can't expect me to turn a cart-wheel, surely, every time I +remember it?" was my none too gracious inquiry. Then I sat down. "But +what is it you want me to do?" I asked, as I sat studying his face, +and I felt sorriest for him because he felt sorry for himself. + +"That's exactly the point," he averred. "There doesn't seem anything +to do. But this can't go on forever." + +"No," I acknowledged. "It seems too much like history repeating +itself." + +His head went down, at that, and it was quite a long time before he +looked up at me again. + +"I don't suppose you can see it from my side of the fence?" he asked +with a disturbing new note of humility in his voice. + +"Not when you force me to stay on the fence," I told him. He seemed to +realize, as he sat there slowly moving his head up and down, that no +further advance was to be made along that line. So he took a deep +breath and sat up. + +"Something will have to be done about getting a new teacher for that +school," he said with an appositeness which was only too painfully +apparent. + +"I've already spoken to two of the trustees," I told him. "They're +getting a teacher from the Peg. It's to be a man this time." + +Instead of meeting my eye, he merely remarked: "That'll be better for +the boy!" + +"In what way?" I inquired. + +"Because I don't think too much petticoat is good for any boy," +responded my lord and master. + +"Big or little!" I couldn't help amending, in spite of all my good +intentions. + +Dinky-Dunk ignored the thrust, though it plainly took an effort. + +"There are times when even kindness can be a sort of cruelty," he +patiently and somewhat platitudinously pursued. + +"Then I wish somebody would ill-treat me along that line," I +interjected. And this time he smiled, though it was only for a +moment. + +"Supposing we stick to the children," he suggested. + +"Of course," I agreed. "And since you've brought the matter up I can't +help telling you that I always felt that my love for my children is +the one redeeming thing in my life." + +"Thanks," said my husband, with a wince. + +"Please don't misunderstand me. I'm merely trying to say that a +mother's love for her children has to be one of the strongest and +holiest things in this hard old world of ours. And it seems only +natural to me that a woman should consider her children first, and +plan for them, and make sacrifices for them, and fight for them if she +has to." + +"It's so natural, in fact," remarked Dinky-Dunk, "that it has been +observed in even the Bengal tigress." + +"It is my turn to thank you," I acknowledged, after giving his +statement a moment or two of thought. + +"But we're getting away from the point again," proclaimed my husband. +"I've been trying to tell you that children are like rabbits: It's +only fit and proper they should be cared for, but they can't thrive, +and they can't even live, if they're handled too much." + +"I haven't observed any alarming absence of health in my children," I +found the courage to say. But a tightness gathered about my heart, for +I could sniff what was coming. + +"They may be all right, as far as that goes," persisted their lordly +parent. "But what I say is, too much cuddling and mollycoddling isn't +good for that boy of yours, or anybody else's boy." And he proceeded +to explain that my Dinkie was an ordinary, every-day, normal child +and should be accepted and treated as such or we'd have a +temperamental little bounder on our hands. + +I knew that my boy wasn't abnormal. But I knew, on the other hand, +that he was an exceptionally impressionable and sensitive child. And I +couldn't be sorry for that, for if there's anything I abhor in this +world it's torpor. And whatever he may have been, nothing could shake +me in my firm conviction that a child's own mother is the best person +to watch over his growth and shape his character. + +"But what is all this leading up to?" I asked, steeling myself for the +unwelcome. + +"Simply to what I've already told you on several occasions," was my +husband's answer. "That it's about time this boy of ours was bundled +off to a boarding-school." + +I sat back, trying to picture my home and my life without Dinkie. But +it was unbearable. It was unthinkable. + +"I shall never agree to that," I quietly retorted. + +"Why?" asked my husband, with a note of triumph which I resented. + +"For one thing, because he is still a child, because he is too young," +I contended, knowing that I could never agree with Dinky-Dunk in his +thoroughly English ideas of education even while I remembered how he +had once said that the greatness of England depended on her +public-schools, such as Harrow and Eton and Rugby and Winchester, and +that she had been the best colonizer in the world because her boys had +been taken young and taught not to overvalue home ties, had been made +manlier by getting off with their own kind instead of remaining +hitched to an apron-string. + +"And you prefer keeping him stuck out here on the prairie?" demanded +Dinky-Dunk. + +"The prairie has been good enough for his parents, this last seven or +eight years," I contended. + +"It hasn't been good enough for me," my husband cried out with quite +unlooked-for passion. "And I've about had my fill of it!" + +"Where would you prefer going?" I asked, trying to speak as quietly as +I could. + +"That's something I'm going to find out as soon as the chance comes," +he retorted with a slow and embittered emphasis which didn't add any +to my peace of mind. + +"Then why cross our bridges," I suggested, "until we come to them?" + +"But you're not looking for bridges," he challenged. "You don't want +to see anything beyond living like Doukhobours out here on the edge of +Nowhere and remembering that you've got your precious offspring here +under your wing and wondering how many bushels of Number-One-Hard it +will take to buy your Dinkie a riding pinto!" + +"Aren't you rather tired to-night?" I asked with all the patience I +could command. + +"Yes, and I'm talking about the thing that makes me tired. For you +know as well as I do that you've made that boy of yours a sort of +anesthetic. You put him on like a nose-cap, and forget the world. He's +about all you remember to think about. Why, when you look at the +clock, nowadays, it isn't ten minutes to twelve. It's always Dinkie +minutes to Dink. When you read a book you're only reading about what +your Dinkie might have done or what your Dinkie is some day to write. +When you picture the Prime Minister it's merely your Dinkie grown big, +laying down the law to a House of Parliament made up of other Dinkies, +rows and rows of 'em. When the sun shines you're wondering whether +it's warm enough for your Dinkie to walk in, and when the snow begins +to melt you're wondering whether it's soft enough for the beloved +Dinkie to mold into snowballs. When you see a girl you at once get +busy speculating over whether or not she'll ever be beautiful enough +for your Dinkie, and when one of the Crowned Heads of Europe announces +the alliance of its youngest princess you fall to pondering if Dinkie +wouldn't have made her a better husband. And when the flowers come out +in your window-box you wonder if they're fair enough to bloom beside +your Dinkie. I don't suppose I ever made a haystack that you didn't +wonder whether it wasn't going to be a grand place for Dinkie to slide +down. And when Dinkie draws a goggle-eyed man on his scribbler you see +Michael Angelo totter and Titian turn in his grave. And when Dinkie +writes a composition of thirty crooked lines on the landing of Hengist +you feel that fate did Hume a mean trick in letting him pass away +before inspecting that final word in historical record. And heaven's +just a row of Dinkies with little gold harps tucked under their wings. +And you think you're breathing air, but all you're breathing is +Dinkies, millions and millions of etherealized Dinkies. And when you +read about the famine in China you inevitably and adroitly hitch the +death of seven thousand Chinks in Yangchow on to the interests of +your immortal offspring. And I suppose Rome really came into being for +the one ultimate end that an immortal young Dinkie might possess his +full degree of Dinkiness and the glory that was Greece must have been +merely the tom-toms tuning up for the finished dance of our Dinkie's +grandeur. Day and night, it's Dinkie, just Dinkie!" + +I waited until he was through. I waited, heavy of heart, until his +foolish fires of revolt had burned themselves out. And it didn't seem +to add to his satisfaction to find that I could inspect him with a +quiet and slightly commiserative eye. + +"You are accusing me," I finally told him, "of something I'm proud of. +And I'm afraid I'll always be guilty of caring for my own son." + +He turned on me with a sort of heavy triumph. + +"Well, it's something that you'll jolly well pay the piper for, some +day," he announced. + +"What do you mean by that?" I demanded. + +"I mean that nothing much is ever gained by letting the maternal +instinct run over. And that's exactly what you're doing. You're trying +to tie Dinkie to your side, when you can no more tie him up than you +can tie up a sunbeam. You could keep him close enough to you, of +course, when he was small. But he's bound to grow away from you as he +gets bigger, just as I grew away from my mother and you once grew away +from yours. It's a natural law, and there's no use crocking your knees +on it. The boy's got his own life to live, and you can't live it for +him. It won't be long, now, before you begin to notice those quiet +withdrawals, those slippings-back into his own shell of self-interest. +And unless you realize what it means, it's going to hurt. And unless +you reckon on that in the way you order your life you're not only +going to be a very lonely old lady but you're going to bump into a big +hole where you thought the going was smoothest!" + +I sat thinking this over, with a ton of lead where my heart should +have been. + +"I've already bumped into a big hole where I thought the going was +smoothest," I finally observed. + +My husband looked at me and then looked away again. + +"I was hoping we could fill that up and forget it," he ventured in a +valorously timid tone which made it hard, for reasons I couldn't quite +fathom, to keep my throat from tightening. But I sat there, shaking my +head from side to side. + +"I've got to love something," I found myself protesting. "And the +children seem all that is left." + +"How about me?" asked my husband, with his acidulated and slightly +one-sided smile. + +"You've changed, Dinky-Dunk," was all I could say. + +"But some day," he contended, "you may wake up to the fact that I'm +still a human being." + +"I've wakened up to the fact that you're a different sort of human +being than I had thought." + +"Oh, we're all very much alike, once you get our number," asserted my +husband. + +"You mean men are," I amended. + +"I mean that if men can't get a little warmth and color and sympathy +in the home-circle they're going to edge about until they find a +substitute for it, no matter how shoddy it may be," contended +Dinky-Dunk. + +"But isn't that a hard and bitter way of writing life down to one's +own level?" I asked, trying to swallow the choke that wouldn't stay +down in my throat. + +"Well, I can't see that we get much ahead by trying to sentimentalize +the situation," he said, with a gesture that seemed one of +frustration. + +We sat staring at each other, and again I had the feeling of abysmal +gulfs of space intervening between us. + +"Is that all you can say about it?" I asked, with a foolish little +gulp I couldn't control. + +"Isn't it enough?" demanded Dinky-Dunk. And I knew that nothing was to +be gained, that night, by the foolish and futile clash of words. + + + + +_Tuesday the Twenty-Third_ + + +I've been doing a good deal of thinking over what Dinky-Dunk said. I +have been trying to see things from his standpoint. By a sort of +mental ju-jutsu I've even been trying to justify what I can't quite +understand in him. But it's no use. There's one bald, hard fact I +can't escape, no matter how I dig my old ostrich-beak of instinct +under the sands of self-deception. There's one cold-blooded truth that +will have to be faced. _My husband is no longer in love with me._ +Whatever else may have happened, I have lost my heart-hold on Duncan +Argyll McKail. I am still his wife, in the eyes of the law, and the +mother of his children. We still live together, and, from force of +habit, if from nothing else, go through the familiar old rites of +daily communion. He sits across the table from me when I eat, and +talks casually enough of the trivially momentous problems of the +minute, or he reads in his slippers before the fire while I do my +sewing within a spool-toss of him. But a row of invisible assegais +stand leveled between his heart and mine. A slow glacier of +green-iced indifferency shoulders in between us; and gone forever is +the wild-flower aroma of youth, the singing spirit of April, the +mysterious light that touched our world with wonder. He is merely a +man, drawing on to middle age, and I am a woman, no longer young. Gone +now are the spring floods that once swept us together. Gone now is the +flame of adoration that burned clean our altar of daily intercourse +and left us blind to the weaknesses we were too happy to remember. For +there was a time when we loved each other. I know that as well as +Duncan does. But it died away, that ghostly flame. It went out like a +neglected fire. And blowing on dead ashes can never revive the +old-time glow. + +"So they were married and lived happy ever afterward!" That is the +familiar ending to the fairy-tales I read over and over again to my +Dinkie and Poppsy. But they are fairy-tales. For who lives happy ever +afterward? First love chloroforms us, for a time, and we try to hug to +our bosoms the illusion that Heaven itself is only a sort of endless +honeymoon presided over by Lohengrin marches. But the anesthetic wears +away and we find that life isn't a bed of roses but a rough field that +rewards us as we till it, with here and there the cornflower of +happiness laughing unexpectedly up at us out of our sober acres of +sober wheat. And often enough we don't know happiness when we see it. +We assuredly find it least where we look for it most. I can't even +understand why we're equipped with such a hunger for it. But I find +myself trending more and more to that cynic philosophy which defines +happiness as the absence of pain. The absence of pain--that is a lot +to ask for, in this life! + +I wonder if Dinky-Dunk is right in his implication that I am getting +hard? There are times, I know, when I grate on him, when he would +probably give anything to get away from me. Yet here we are, linked +together like two convicts. And I don't believe I'm as hard as my +husband accuses me of being. However macadamized they may have made +life for me, there's at least one soft spot in my heart, one garden +under the walls of granite. And that's the spot which my two children +fill, which my children keep green, which my children keep holy. It's +them I think of, when I think of the future--when I should at least be +thinking a little of my grammar and remembering that the verb "to be" +takes the nominative, just as discontented husbands seem to take the +initiative! That's why I can't quite find the courage to ask for +freedom. I have seen enough of life to know what the smash-up of a +family means to its toddlers. And I want my children to have a chance. +They can't have that chance without at least two things. One is the +guardianship of home life, and the other is that curse of modern times +known as money. We haven't prospered as we had hoped to, but heaven +knows I've kept an eagle eye on that savings-account of mine, in that +absurdly new and resplendent red-brick bank in Buckhorn. Patiently +I've fed it with my butter and egg money, joyfully I've seen it grow +with my meager Nitrate dividends, and grimly I've made it bigger with +every loose dollar I could lay my hands on. There's no heroism in my +going without things I may have thought I needed, just as there can be +little nobility in my sticking to a husband who no longer loves me. +For it's not Chaddie McKail who counts now, but her chicks. And I'll +have to look for my reward through them, for I'm like Romanes' rat +now, too big to get into the bottle of cream, but wary enough to know +I can dine from a tail still small enough for insertion. I'm merely a +submerged prairie-hen with the best part of her life behind her. + +But it bothers me, what Duncan says about my always thinking of little +Dinkie first. And I'm afraid I do, though it seems neither right nor +fair. I suppose it's because he was my first-born--and having come +first in my life he must come first in my thoughts. I was made to love +somebody--and my husband doesn't seem to want me to love him. So he +has driven me to centering my thoughts on the child. I've got to have +something to warm up to. And any love I may lavish on this +prairie-chick of mine, who has to face life with the lack of so many +things, will not only be a help to the boy, but will be a help to me, +the part of Me that I'm sometimes so terribly afraid of. + +Yet I can't help wondering if Duncan has any excuses for claiming that +it's personal selfishness which prompts me to keep my boy close to my +side. And am I harming him, without knowing it, in keeping him here +under my wing? Schools are all right, in a way, but surely a good +mother can do as much in the molding of a boy's mind as a +boarding-school with a file of Ph.D.'s on its staff. But am I a good +mother? And should I trust myself, in a matter like this, to my own +feelings? Men, in so many things, are better judges than women. Yet it +has just occurred to me that all men do not think alike. I've been +sitting back and wondering what kindly old Peter would say about it. +And I've decided to write Peter and ask what he advises. He'll tell +the truth, I know, for Peter is as honest as the day is long.... + +I've just been up to make sure the children were properly covered in +bed. And it disturbed me a little to find that without even thinking +about it I went to Dinkie first. It seemed like accidental +corroboration of all that Duncan has been saying. But I stood studying +him as he lay there asleep. It frightened me a little, to find him so +big. If it's true, as Duncan threatens, that time will tend to turn +him away from me, it's something that I'm going to fight tooth and +nail. And I've seen no sign of it, as yet. With every month and every +year that's added to his age he grows more companionable, more able to +bridge the chasm between two human souls. We have more interests in +common, more things to talk about. And day by day Dinkie is reaching +up to my clumsily mature way of looking at life. He can come to me +with his problems, knowing I'll always give him a hearing, just as he +used to come to me with his baby cuts and bruises, knowing they would +be duly kissed and cared for. Yet some day, I have just remembered, +he may have problems that can't be brought to me. But that day, please +God, I shall defer as long as possible. Already we have our own little +secrets and private compacts and understandings. I don't want my boy +to be a mollycoddle. But I want him to have his chance in the world. I +want him to be somebody. I can't reconcile myself to the thought of +him growing up to wear moose-mittens and shoe-packs and stretching +barb-wire in blue-jeans and riding a tractor across a prairie +back-township. I refuse to picture him getting bent and gray wringing +a livelihood out of an over-cropped ranch fourteen miles away from a +post-office and a world away from the things that make life most worth +living. If he were an ordinary boy, I might be led to think +differently. But my Dinkie is not an ordinary boy. There's a spark of +the unusual, of the exceptional, in that laddie. And I intend to fan +that spark, whatever the cost may be, until it breaks out into +genius. + + + + +_Sunday the Twenty-Eighth_ + + +I've had scant time for introspection during the last five days, for +Struthers has been in bed with lumbago, and the weight of the +housework reverted to me. But Whinstane Sandy brought his precious +bottle of Universal Ointment in from the bunk-house, and while that +fiery mixture warmed her lame back, the thought of its origin probably +warmed her lonely heart. I have suddenly wakened up to the fact that +Struthers is getting on a bit. She is still the same efficient and +self-obliterating mainstay of the kitchen that she ever was, but she +grows more "sot" in her ways, more averse to any change in her daily +routine, and more despairing of ever finally and completely capturing +that canny old Scotsman whom we still so affectionately designate as +Whinnie, in short for Whinstane Sandy. Whinnie, I'm afraid, still +nurses the fixed idea that everything in petticoats and as yet +unwedded is after him. And it is only by walking with the utmost +circumspection that he escapes their wiles and by maintaining an +unbroken front withstands their unseemly advances. + +The new school-teacher has arrived, and is to live with us here at +Casa Grande. I have my reasons for this. In the first place, it will +be a help to Dinkie in his studies. In the second place, it means that +the teacher can pack my boy back and forth to school, in bad weather, +and next month when Poppsy joins the ranks of the learners, can keep a +more personal eye on that little tot's movements. And in the third +place the mere presence of another male at Casa Grande seems to dilute +the acids of home life. + +Gershom Binks is the name of this new teacher, and I have just learned +that in the original Hebrew "Gershom" not inappropriately means "a +stranger there." He is a sophomore (a most excellent word, that, when +you come to inquire into its etymology!) from the University of +Minnesota and is compelled to teach the young idea, for a time, to +accumulate sufficient funds to complete his course, which he wants to +do at Ann Arbor. And Gershom is a very tall and very thin and very +short-sighted young man, with an Adam's apple that works up and down +with a two-inch plunge over the edge of his collar when he +talks--which he does somewhat extensively. He wears glasses with big +bulging lenses, glasses which tend to hide a pair of timid and +brown-October-aleish eyes with real kindliness in them. He looks +ill-nourished, but I can detect nothing radically wrong with his +appetite. It's merely that, like Cassius, he thinks too much. And I'm +going to fatten that boy up a bit, before the year is out, or know the +reason why. He may be a trifle self-conscious and awkward, but he's +also amazingly clean of both body and mind, and it will be no +hardship, I know, to have him under our roof. And for all his devotion +to Science, he reads his Bible every night--which is more than Chaddie +McKail does! He rather took the wind out of my sails by demanding, the +first morning at breakfast, if I knew that one half-ounce of the web +of the spider--the arachnid of the order _Araneida_, he explained--if +stretched out in a straight line would reach from the city of Chicago +to the city of Paris. I told him that this was a most wonderful and a +most interesting piece of information and hoped that some day we could +verify it by actual test. Yet when I inquired whether he meant merely +the environs of the city of Paris, or the very heart of the city such +as the Place de l'Opera, he studied me with the meditative eye with +which Huxley must have once studied beetles. + +Dinky-Dunk, I notice, is as restive as a bull-moose in black-fly +season. He's doing his work on the land, as about every ranch-owner +has to, whether he's happily married or not, but he's doing it without +any undue impression of its epical importance. I heard him observe, +yesterday, that if he could only get his hands on enough ready money +he'd like to swing into land business in a live center like Calgary. +He has a friend there, apparently, who has just made a clean-up in +city real estate and bought his wife a Detroit Electric and built a +home for himself that cost forty thousand dollars. I reminded +Dinky-Dunk, when he had finished, that we really must have a new +straining-mesh in the milk-separator. He merely looked at me with a +sour and morose eye as he got up and went out to his team. + +Surely these men-folks are a dissatisfied lot! Gershom to-night +complained that his own name of "Gershom Binks" impressed him as about +the ugliest name that was ever hitched on to a scholar and a +gentlemen. And later on, after I'd opened my piano and tried to +console myself with a tu'penny draught of Grieg, he inspected the +instrument and informed me that it was really evolved from the +six-stringed harps of the fourth Egyptian dynasty, which in the fifth +dynasty was made with a greatly enlarged base, thus giving the +rudimentary beginning of a soundboard. + +I am learning a lot from Gershom! And so are my kiddies, for that +matter. I begin, in fact, to feel like royalty with a private tutor, +for every night now Dinkie and Poppsy and Gershom sit about the +living-room table and drink of the founts of wisdom. But we have a +teacher here who loves to teach. And he is infinitely patient and kind +with my little toddlers. Dinkie already asks him questions without +number, while Poppsy gratefully but decorously vamps him with her +infantine gazes. Then Gershom--Heaven bless his scholastic old +high-browed solemnity--has just assured me that Dinkie betrays many +evidences of an exceptionally bright mind. + + + + +_Friday the Second_ + + +My husband yesterday accused me of getting moss-backed. He had been +harping on the city string again and asked me if I intended to live +and die a withered beauty on a back-trail ranch. + +That "withered beauty" hurt, though I did my best to ignore it, for +the time at least. And Dinky-Dunk went on to say that it struck him as +one of life's little ironies that _I_ should want to stick to the sort +of life we were leading, remembering what I'd come from. + +"Dinky-Dunk," I told him, "it's terribly hard to explain exactly how I +feel about it all. I suppose I could never make you see it as I see +it. But it's a feeling like loyalty, loyalty to the land that's given +us what we have. And it's also a feeling of disliking to see one old +rule repeating itself: what has once been a crusade becoming merely a +business. To turn and leave our land now, it seems to me, would make +us too much like those soulless soil-robbers you used to rail at, like +those squatters who've merely squeezed out what they could and have +gone on, like those land-miners who take all they can get and stand +ready to put nothing back. Why, if we were all like that, we'd have no +country here. We'd be a wilderness, a Barren Grounds that went from +the Border up to the Circle. But there's something bigger than that +about it all. I love the prairie. Just why it is, I don't know. It's +too fundamental to be fashioned into words, and I never realized how +deep it was until I went back to the city that time. One can just say +it, and let it go at that: _I love the prairie._ It isn't merely its +bigness, just as it isn't altogether its freedom and its openness. +Perhaps it's because it keeps its spirit of the adventurous. I love it +the same as my children love _The Arabian Nights_ and _The Swiss +Family Robinson_. I thought it was mostly cant, once, that cry about +being next to nature, but the more I know about nature the more I feel +with Pope that naught but man is vile, to speak as impersonally, my +dear Diddums, as the occasion will permit. I'm afraid I'm like that +chickadee that flew into the bunk-house and Whinnie caught and put in +a box-cage for Dinkie. I nearly die at the thought of being cooped up. +I want clean air and open space about me." + +"I never dreamed you'd been Indianized to that extent," murmured my +husband. + +"Being Indianized," I proceeded, "seems to carry the inference of also +being barbarized. But it isn't quite that, Dinky-Dunk, for there's +something almost spiritually satisfying about this prairie life if +you've only got the eyes to see it. I think that's because the prairie +always seems so majestically beautiful to me. I can see your lip curl +again, but I know I'm right. When I throw open my windows of a morning +and see that placid old never-ending plain under its great wash of +light something lifts up in my breast, like a bird, and no matter how +a mere man has been doing his best to make me miserable that something +stands up on the tip of my heart and does its darnedest to sing. It +impresses me as life on such a sane and gigantic scale that I want to +be an actual part of it, that I positively ache to have a share in its +immensities. It seems so fruitful and prodigal and generous and +patient. It's so open-handed in the way it produces and gives and +returns our love. And there's a completeness about it that makes me +feel it can't possibly be wrong." + +"The Eskimo, I suppose, feels very much the same in his little igloo +of ice with a pot of whale-blubber at his elbow," observed my +husband. + +"You're a brute, my dear Diddums, and more casually cruel than a +Baffin-land cannibal," I retorted. "But we'll let it pass. For I'm +talking about something that's too fundamental to be upset by a bitter +tongue. There was a time, I know, when I used to fret about the finer +things I thought I was losing out of life, about the little hand-made +fripperies people have been forced to conjure up and carpenter +together to console them for having to live in human beehives made of +steel and concrete. But I'm beginning to find out that joy isn't a +matter of geography and companionship isn't a matter of over-crowded +subways. And the strap-hangers and the train-catchers and the +first-nighters can have what they've got. I don't seem to envy them +the way I used to. I don't need a Louvre when I've got the Northern +Lights to look at. And I can get along without an AEolian Hall when +I've got a little music in my own heart--for it's only what you've got +there, after all, that really counts in this world!" + +"All of which means," concluded my husband, "that you are most +unmistakably growing old!" + +"You have already," I retorted, "referred to me as a withered +beauty." + +Dinky-Dunk studied me long and intently. I even felt myself turning +pink under that prolonged stare of appraisal. + +"You are still easy to look at," he over-slangily and over-generously +admitted. "But I do regret that you aren't a little easier to live +with!" + +I could force a little laugh, at that, but I couldn't quite keep a +tremor out of my voice when I spoke again. + +"I'm sorry you see only my bad side, Dinky-Dunk. But it's kindness +that seems to bring everything that is best out of us women. We're +terribly like sliced pineapple in that respect: give us just a +sprinkling of sugar, and out come all the juices!" + +It was Dinky-Dunk's color that deepened a little as he turned and +knocked out his pipe. + +"That's a Chaddie McKail argument," he merely observed as he stood up. +"And a Chaddie McKail argument impresses me as suspiciously like Swiss +cheese: it doesn't seem to be genuine unless you can find plenty of +holes in it." + +I did my best to smile at his humor. + +"But this isn't an argument," I quietly corrected. "I'd look at it +more in the nature of an ultimatum." + +That brought him up short, as I had intended it to do. He stood +worrying over it as Bobs and Scotty worry over a bone. + +"I'm afraid," he finally intoned, "I've been repeatedly doing you the +great injustice of underestimating your intelligence!" + +"That," I told him, "is a point where I find silence imposed upon +me." + +He didn't speak until he got to the door. + +"Well, I'm glad we've cleared the air a bit anyway," he said with a +grim look about his Holbein Astronomer old mouth as he went out. + +But we haven't cleared the air. And it disturbs me more than I can say +to find that I have reservations from my husband. It bewilders me to +see that I can't be perfectly candid with him. But there are certain +deeper feelings that I can no longer uncover in his presence. +Something holds me back from explaining to him that this fixed dread +of mine for all cities is largely based on my loss of little Pee-Wee. +For if I hadn't gone to New York that time, to Josie Langdon's +wedding, I might never have lost my boy. They did the best they +could, I suppose, before their telegrams brought me back, but they +didn't seem to understand the danger. And little did I dream, before +the Donnelly butler handed me that first startling message just as we +were climbing into the motor to go down to the Rochambeau to meet +Chinkie and Tavvy, that within a week I was to sit and watch the +cruelest thing that can happen in this world. I was to see a small +child die. I was to watch my own Pee-Wee pass quietly away. + +I have often wondered, since, why I never shed a tear during all those +terrible three days. I couldn't, in some way, though the nurse herself +was crying, and poor old Whinnie and Struthers were sobbing together +next to the window, and dour old Dinky-Dunk, on the other side of the +bed, was racking his shoulders with smothered sobs as he held the +little white hand in his and the warmth went forever out of the little +fingers where his foolish big hand was trying to hold back the life +that couldn't be kept there. The old are ready to die, or can make +themselves ready. They have run their race and had their turn at +living. But it seems cruel hard to see a little tot, with eagerness +still in his heart, taken away, taken away with the wonder of things +still in his eyes. It stuns you. It makes you rebel. It leaves a scar +that Time itself can never completely heal. + +Yet through it all I can still hear the voice of valorous old Whinnie +as he patted my shoulder and smiled with the brine still in the seams +of his furrowed old face. "We'll thole through, lassie; we'll thole +through!" he said over and over again. Yes; we'll thole through. And +this is only the uncovering of old wounds. And one must keep one's +heart and one's house in order, for with us we still have the living. + +But Dinky-Dunk can't completely understand, I'm afraid, this morbid +hankering of mine to keep my family about me, to have the two chicks +that are left to me close under my wing. And never once, since Pee-Wee +went, have I actually punished either of my children. It may be wrong, +but I can't help it. I don't want memories of violence to be left +corroding and rankling in my mind. And I'd hate to see any child of +mine cringe, like an ill-treated dog, at every lift of the hand. There +are better ways of controlling them, I begin to feel, than through +fear. Their father, I know, will never agree with me on this matter. +He will always insist on mastery, open and undisputed mastery, in his +own house. He is the head of this Clan McKail, the sovereign of this +little circle. For we can say what we will about democracy, but when +a child is born unto a man that man unconsciously puts on the purple. +He becomes the ruler and sits on the throne of authority. He even +seeks to cloak his weaknesses and his mistakes in that threadbare old +fabrication about the divine right of kings. But I can see that he is +often wrong, and even my Dinkie can see that he is not always right in +his decrees. More and more often, of late, I've observed the boy +studying his father, studying him with an impersonal and critical eye. +And this habit of silent appraisal is plainly something which Duncan +resents, and resents keenly. He's beginning to have a feeling, I'm +afraid, that he can't quite get _at_ the boy. And there's a youthful +shyness growing up in Dinkie which seems to leave him ashamed of any +display of emotion before his father. I can see that it even begins to +exasperate Duncan a little, to be shut out behind those incontestable +walls of reserve. It's merely, I'm sure, that the child is so terribly +afraid of ridicule. He already nurses a hankering to be regarded as +one of the grown-ups and imagines there's something rather babyish in +any undue show of feeling. Yet he is hungry for affection. And he +aches, I know, for the approbation of his male parent, for the +approval of a full-grown man whom he can regard as one of his own +kind. He even imitates his father in the way in which he stands in +front of the fire, with his heels well apart. And he gives me chills +up the spine by pulling short on one bridle-rein and making Buntie, +his mustang-pony, pirouette just as the wicked-tempered Briquette +sometimes pirouettes when his father is in the saddle. Yet +Dinky-Dunk's nerves are a bit ragged and there are times when he's not +always just with the boy, though it's not for me to confute what the +instinctive genius of childhood has already made reasonably clear to +Dinkie's discerning young eye. But I can not, of course, encourage +insubordination. All I can do is to ignore the unwelcome and try to +crowd it aside with happier things. I want my boy to love me, as I +love him. And I think he does. I _know_ he does. That knowledge is an +azure and bottomless lake into which I can toss my blackest pebbles of +fear, my flintiest doubts of the future. + + + + +_Sunday the Fourth_ + + +I wish I could get by the scruff of the neck that sophomoric old +philosopher who once said nothing survives being thought of. For I've +been learning, this last two or three days, just how wide of the mark +he shot. And it's all arisen out of Dinky-Dunk's bland intimation that +I am "a withered beauty." Those words have held like a fish-hook in +the gills of my memory. If they'd come from somebody else they +mightn't have meant so much. But from one's own husband--Wow!--they go +in like a harpoon. And they have given me a great deal to think about. +There are times, I find, when I can accept that intimation of slipping +into the sere and yellow leaf without revolt. Then the next moment it +fills me with a sort of desperation. I refuse to go up on the shelf. I +see red and storm against age. I refuse to bow to the inevitable. My +spirit recoils at the thought of decay. For when you're fading you're +surely decaying, and when you're decaying you're approaching the end. +So stop, Father Time, stop, or I'll get out of the car! + +But we can't get out of the car. That's the tragic part of it. We have +to go on, whether we like it or not. We have to buck up, and grin and +bear it, and make the best of a bad bargain. And Heaven knows I've +never wanted to be one of the Glooms! I've no hankering to sit with +the Sob Sisters and pump brine over the past. I'm light-hearted enough +if they'll only give me a chance. I've always believed in getting what +we could out of life and looking on the sunny side of things. And the +disturbing part of it is, I don't _feel_ withered--not by a jugful! +There are mornings when I can go about my homely old duties singing +like a prairie Tetrazzini. There are days when I could do a +hand-spring, if for nothing more than to shock my solemn old +Dinky-Dunk out of his dourness. There are times when we go skimming +along the trail with the crystal-cool evening air in our faces and the +sun dipping down toward the rim of the world when I want to thank +Somebody I can't see for Something-or-other I can't define. _Dum +vivimus vivamus._ + +But it seems hard to realize that I'm a sedate and elderly lady +already on the shady side of thirty. A woman over thirty years +old--and I can remember the days of my intolerant youth when I +regarded the woman of thirty as an antiquated creature who should be +piously preparing herself for the next world. And it doesn't take +thirty long to slip into forty. And then forty merges into fifty--and +there you are, a nice old lady with nervous indigestion and +knitting-needles and a tendency to breathe audibly after ascending the +front-stairs. No wonder, last night, it drove me to taking a volume of +George Moore down from the shelf and reading his chapter on "The Woman +of Thirty." But I found small consolation in that over-uxorious essay, +feeling as I did that I knew life quite as well as any amorous +studio-rat who ever made copy out of his mottled past. So I was +driven, in the end, to studying myself long and intently in the +broken-hinged mirrors of my dressing-table. And I didn't find much +there to fortify my quailing spirit. I was getting on a bit. I was +curling up a little around the edges. There was no denying that fact. +For I could see a little fan-light of lines at the outer corner of +each eye. And down what Dinky-Dunk once called the honeyed corners of +my mouth went another pair of lines which clearly came from too much +laughing. But most unmistakably of all there was a line coming under +my chin, a small but tell-tale line, announcing the fact that I wasn't +losing any in weight, and standing, I suppose, one of the foot-hills +which precede the Rocky-Mountain dewlaps of old age. It wouldn't be +long, I could see, before I'd have to start watching my diet, and +looking for a white hair or two, and probably give up horseback +riding. And then settle down into an ingle-nook old dowager with a +hassock under _my_ feet and a creak in my knees and a fixed conviction +that young folks never acted up in _my_ youth as they act up +nowadays. + +I tried to laugh it away, but my heart went down like a dredge-dipper. +Whereupon I set my jaw, which didn't make me look any younger. But I +didn't much care, for the mirror had already done its worst. + +"Not muchee!" I said as I sat there making faces at myself. "You're +still one of the living. The bloom may be off in a place or two, but +you're sound to the core, and serviceable for many a year. So _sursum +corda! 'Rung ho! Hira Singh!_' as Chinkie taught us to shout in the +old polo days. And that means, Go in and win, Chaddie McKail, and die +with your boots on if you have to." + +I was still intent on that study of my robust-looking but slightly +weather-beaten map when Dinky-Dunk walked in and caught me in the +middle of my Narcissus act. + +"'All is vanity saith the Preacher,'" he began. But he stopped short +when I swung about at him. For I hadn't, after all, been able to +carpenter together even a whale-boat of consolation out of my wrecked +schooner of hope. + +"Oh, Kakaibod," I wailed, "I'm a pie-faced old has-been, and nobody +will ever love me again!" + +He only laughed, on his way out, and announced that I seemed to be +getting my share of loving, as things went. But he didn't take back +what he said about me being withered. And the first thing I shall do +to-morrow, when Gershom comes down to breakfast, will be to ask him +how old Cleopatra was when she brought Antony to his knees and how +antiquated Ninon D'Enclos was when she lost her power over that +semi-civilized creature known as Man. Gershom will know, for Gershom +knows everything. + + + + +_Wednesday the Seventh_ + + +Gershom has been studying some of my carbon-prints. He can't for the +life of him understand why I consider Dewing's _Old-fashioned Gown_ so +beautiful, or why I should love Childe Hassam's _Church at Old Lyme_ +or see anything remarkable about Metcalf's _May Night_. But I cherish +them as one cherishes photographs of lost friends. + +A couple of the Horatio Walker's, he acknowledged, seemed to mean +something to him. But Gershom's still in the era when he demands a +story in the picture and could approach Monet and Degas only by way of +Meissonier and Bouguereau. And a print, after all, is only a print. +He's slightly ashamed to admire beauty as mere beauty, contending that +at the core of all such things there should be a moral. So we +pow-wowed for an hour and more over the threadbare old theme and the +most I could get out of Gershom was that the lady in _The +Old-fashioned Gown_ reminded him of me, only I was more vital. But all +that talk about landscape and composition and line and tone made me +momentarily homesick for a glimpse of Old Lyme again, before I go to +my reward. + +But the mood didn't last. And I no longer regret what's lost. I don't +know what mysterious Divide it is I have crossed over, but it seems to +be peace I want now instead of experience. I'm no longer envious of +the East and all it holds. I'm no longer fretting for wider circles of +life. The lights may be shining bright on many a board-walk, at this +moment, but it means little to this ranch-lady. What I want now is a +better working-plan for that which has already been placed before me. +Often and often, in the old days, when I realized how far away from +the world this lonely little island of Casa Grande and its inhabitants +stood, I used to nurse a ghostly envy for the busier tideways of life +from which we were banished. I used to feel that grandeur was in some +way escaping me. I could picture what was taking place in some of +those golden-gray old cities I had known: The Gardens of the +Luxembourg when the horse-chestnuts were coming out in bloom, and the +Chateau de Madrid in the Bois at the luncheon hour, or the Pre Catalan +on a Sunday with heavenly sole in lemon and melted butter and a still +more heavenly waltz as you sat eating _fraises des bois_ smothered in +thick _creme d'Isigny_. Or the Piazzi di Spagna on Easter Sunday with +the murmur of Rome in your ears and the cars and carriages flashing +through the green-gold shadows of the Pincio. Or Hyde Park in May, +with the sun sifting through the brave old trees and flashing on the +helmets of the Life Guards as the King goes by in a scarlet uniform +with the blue Order of the Garter on his breast, or Park Lane on a +glorious light-and-shadow afternoon in June and a dip into the +familiar old Americanized clangor at the Cecil; or Chinkie's place in +Devonshire about a month earlier, sitting out on the terrace wrapped +in steamer-rugs and waiting for the moon to come up and the first +nightingale to sing. Of Fifth Avenue shining almost bone-white in the +clear December sunlight and the salted nuts and orange-blossom +cocktails at Sherry's, or the Plaza tea-room at about five o'clock in +the afternoon with the smell of Turkish tobacco and golden pekoe and +hot-house violets and Houbigant's _Quelque-fleurs_ all tangled up +together. Or the City of Wild Parsley in March with a wave of wild +flowers breaking over the ruins of Selinunte and the tumbling pillars +of the Temple of Olympian Zeus lying time-mellowed in the clear +Sicilian sunlight! + +They were all lovely enough, and still are, I suppose, but it's a +loveliness in some way involved with youth. So the memory of those +far-off gaieties, which, after all, were so largely physical, no +longer touch me with unrest. They're wine that's drunk and water +that's run under the bridge. Younger lips can drink of that cup, which +was sweet enough in its time. Let the newer girls dance their legs off +under the French crystals of the Ritz, and powder their noses over the +Fountain of the Sunken Boat, and eat the numbered duck so +reverentially doled out at La Tour d'Argent and puff their cigarettes +behind the beds of begonias and marguerites at the Chateau Madrid. +They too will get tired of it, and step aside for others. For the +petal falls from the blossom and the blossom plumps out into fruit. +And all those golden girls, when their day is over, must slip away +from those gardens of laughter. When they don't, they only make +themselves ridiculous. For there's nothing sadder than an antique lady +of other days decking herself out in the furbelows of a lost youth. +And I've got Dinky-Dunk's overalls to patch and my bread to set, so I +can't think much more about it to-night. But after I've done my +chores, and before I go up to bed, I'm going to read _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ +right through to the end. I'll do it in front of the fire, with my +feet up and with three Ontario Northern Spy apples on a plate beside +me, to be munched as Audrey herself might have munched them, oblivious +of any Touchstone and his reproving eyes. + +I have stopped to ponder, however, how much of this morbid dread of +mine for big cities is due to that short and altogether unsatisfactory +visit to New York, to that sense of coming back a stranger and finding +old friends gone and those who were left with such entirely new +interests. + +I was out of it, completely and dishearteningly out of it. And my +clothes were all wrong. My hats were wrong; my shoes were wrong; and +every rag I had on me was in some way wrong. I was a tourist from the +provinces. And I wasn't up-to-date with either what was on me or was +_in_ me. I didn't even know the new subway routes or the telephone +rules or the proper places to go for tea. The Metropolitan looked +cramped and shoddy and _Tristan_ seemed shoddily sung to me. There was +no thrill to it. And even _The Jewels of the Madonna_ impressed me as +a bit garish and off color, with the Apache Dance of the last act +almost an affront to God and man. I even asked myself, when I found +that I had lost the trick of laughing at bridal-suite farces, if it +was the possession of children that had changed me. For when you're +with children you must in some way match their snowy innocence with a +kindred coloring of innocence, very much as the hare and the weasel +and the ptarmigan turn white to match the whiteness of our northern +winter. Yet I was able to wring pure joy out of Rachmaninoff's playing +at Carnegie Hall, with a great man making music for music's sake. I +loved the beauty and balance and splendid sanity of that playing, +without keyboard fire-works and dazzle and glare. But Rachmaninoff was +the exception. Even Central Park seemed smaller than of old, and I +couldn't remember which drives Dinky-Dunk and I had taken in the +historic old hansom-cab after our equally historic marriage by +ricochet. Fifth Avenue itself was different, the caterpillar of trade +having crawled a little farther up the stalk of fashion, for the +shops, I found, went right up to the Park, and the old W. K. house +where we once danced our long-forgotten Dresden China Quadrille, in +imitation of the equally forgotten Eighty-Three event, confronted me +as a beehive of business offices. I couldn't quite get used to the new +names and the new faces and the new shops and the side-street theaters +and the thought of really nice girls going to a prize-fight in +Madison Square Garden, and the eternal and never-ending talk about +drinks, about where and how to get them, and how to mix them, and how +much Angostura to put into 'em, and the musty ale that used to be had +at Losekam's in Washington, and the _Beaux Arts_ cocktails that used +to come with a dash of absinthe, and the shipment of pinch-neck Scotch +which somebody smuggled in on his cruiser-yacht from the east end of +Cuba, and so-forth and so-forth until I began to feel that the only +important thing in the world was the possession and dispensation of +alcohol. And out of it I got the headache without getting the fun. I +had the same dull sense of being cheated which came to me in my +flapper days when I fell asleep with a mouthful of contraband gum and +woke up in the morning with my jaw-muscles tired--I'd been facing all +the exertion without getting any of the satisfaction. + +The one bright spot to me, in that lost city of my childhood, was the +part of Madison Avenue which used to be known as Murray Hill, the +right-of-way along the west sidewalk of which I once commandeered for +an afternoon's coasting. I could see again, as I glanced down the +familiar slope, the puffy figure of old Major Elmes, who in those +days was always pawing somebody, since he seemed to believe with +Novalis that he touched heaven when he placed his hand on a human +body. I could see myself sky-hooting down that icy slope on my +coaster, approaching the old Major from the rear and peremptorily +piping out: "One side, please!" For I was young then, and I expected +all life to make way for me. But the old Major betrayed no intention +of altering his solemnly determined course at any such juvenile +suggestion, with the result that he sat down on me bodily, and for the +next two blocks approached his club in Madison Square in a manner and +at a speed which he had in no wise anticipated. But, _Eheu_, how long +ago it all seemed! + + + + +_Saturday the Tenth_ + + +Peter has written back in answer to my question as to the expediency +of sending my boy off to a boarding-school. He put all he had to say +in two lines. They were: + +"_I had a mother like Dinkie's, I'd stick to her until the stars were +dust._" + +That was very nice of Peter, of course, but I don't imagine he had any +idea of the peck of trouble he was going to stir up at Casa Grande. +For Dinky-Dunk picked up the sheet of paper on which that +light-hearted message had been written and perused the two lines, +perused them with a savagery which rather disturbed me. He read them +for the second time, and then he put them down. His eye, as he +confronted me, was a glacial one. + +"It's too bad we can't run this show without the interference of +outsiders," he announced as he stalked out of the room. + +I've been thinking the thing over, and trying to get my husband's +view-point. But I can't quite succeed. There has always been a touch +of the satyric in Dinky-Dunk's attitude toward Peter's weekly letter +to my boy. He has even intimated that they were written in a new kind +of Morse, the inference being that they were intended to carry +messages in cipher to eyes other than Dinkie's. But Peter is much too +honest a man for any such resort to subterfuge. And Dinky-Dunk has +always viewed with a hostile eye the magazines and books and toys +which big-hearted Peter has showered out on us. Peter always was +ridiculously open-handed. And he always loved my Dinkie. And it's only +natural that our thoughts should turn back to where our love has been +left. Peter, I know, gets quite as much fun out of those elaborately +playful letters to Dinkie as Dinkie does himself. And it's left the +boy more anxious to learn, to the end that he may pen a more +respectable reply to them. + +Some of Peter's gifts, it is true, have been embarrassingly ornate, +but Peter, who has been given so much, must have remembered how little +has come to my kiddies. It was my intention, for a while, to talk this +over with Dinky-Dunk, to try to make him see it in a more reasonable +light. But I have now given up that intention. There's a phantasmal +something that holds me back.... + +I dreamt last night that my little Dinkie was a grown youth in a Greek +academy, wearing a toga and sitting on a marble bench overlooking a +sea of lovely sapphire. There both Peter and Percy, also arrayed in +togas, held solemn discourse with my offspring and finally agreed that +once they were through with him he would be the Wonder of the Age.... + +Dinky-Dunk asked me point-blank to-day if I'd consider the sale of +Casa Grande, provided he got the right price for the ranch. I felt, +for a moment, as though the bottom had been knocked out of my world. +But it showed me the direction in which my husband's thoughts have +been running of late. And I just as pointedly retorted that I'd never +consent to the sale of Casa Grande. It's not merely because it's our +one and only home. It's more because of the little knoll where the +four Manitoba maples have been set and the row of prairie-roses have +been planted along the little iron fence, the little iron fence which +twice a year I paint a virginal white, with my own hands. For that's +where my Pee-Wee sleeps, and that lonely little grave must never pass +out of my care, to be forgotten and neglected and tarnished with +time. It's not a place of sorrow now, but more an altar, duly tended, +the flower-covered bed of my Pee-Wee, of my poor little Pee-Wee who +was so brimming with life and love. He used to make me think of a +humming-bird in a garden--and now all I have left of him is my small +chest of toys and trinkets and baby-clothes. God, I know, will be good +to that lonely little newcomer in His world of the statelier dead, in +His gallery of whispering ghosts. Oh, be good to him, God! Be good to +him, or You shall be no God of mine! I can't think of him as dead, as +going out like a candle, as melting into nothingness as the little +bones under their six feet of earth molder away. But my laddie is +gone. And I must not be morbid. As Peter once said, misery loves +company, but the company is apt to seek more convivial quarters. Yet +something has gone out of my life, and that something drives me back +to my Dinkie and my Poppsy with a sort of fierceness in my hunger to +love them, to make the most of them. + +Gershom, who has been giving Poppsy a daily lesson at home, has just +inquired why she shouldn't be sent to school along with Dinkie. And +her father has agreed. It gave me the wretched feeling, for a moment +or two, that they were conspiring to take my last baby away from me. +But I have to bow to the fact that I no longer possess one, since +Poppsy announced her preference, the other day, for a doll "with real +livings in it." She begins to show as fixed an aversion to baby-talk +as that entertained by old Doctor Johnson himself, and no longer +yearns to "do yidin on the team-tars," as she used to express it. The +word "birthday" is still "birfday" with her, and "water" is still +"wagger," but she now religiously eschews all such reiterative +diminutives as "roundy-poundy" and "Poppsy-Woppsy" and "beddy-bed." +She has even learned, after much effort, to convert her earlier "keam +of feet" into the more legitimate and mature "cream of wheat." And now +that she has a better mastery of the sibilants the charm has rather +gone out of the claim, which I so laboriously taught her, that "Daddy +is all feet," meaning, of course, that he was altogether sweet--which +he gave small sign of being when he first caught the point of my +patient schooling. She is not so quick-tongued as her brother Dinkie, +but she has a natural fastidiousness which makes her long for +alignment with the proprieties. She is, in fact, a conformist, a +sedate and dignified little lady who will never be greatly given to +the spilling of beans and the upsetting of apple-carts. She is, in +many ways, amazingly like her pater. She will, I know, be a nice girl +when she grows up, without very much of that irresponsibility which +seems to have been the bugbear of her maternal parent. I'm even +beginning to believe there's something in the old tradition about +ancestral traits so often skipping a generation. At any rate, that +crazy-hearted old Irish grandmother of mine passed on to me a muckle +o' her wildness, the mad County Clare girl who swore at the vicar and +rode to hounds and could take a seven-barred gate without turning a +hair and was apt to be always in love or in debt or in hot water. She +died too young to be tamed, I'm told, for say what you will, life +tames us all in the end. Even Lady Hamilton took to wearing +red-flannel petticoats before she died, and Buffalo Bill faded down +into plain Mr. William Cody, and the abducted Helen of Troy gave many +a day up to her needlework, we are told, and doubtlessly had trouble +with both her teeth and her waist measurement. + +Dinky-Dunk is proud of his Poppsy and has announced that it's about +time we tucked the "Poppsy" away with her baby-clothes and resorted to +the use of the proper and official "Pauline Augusta." So Pauline we +shall try to have it, after this. There are several things, I think, +which draw Dinky-Dunk and his Poppsy--I mean his Pauline--together. +One is her likeness to himself. Another is her tractability, though I +hate to hitch so big a word on to so small a lady. And still another +is the fact that she is a girl. There's a subliminal play of +sex-attraction about it, I suppose, just as there probably is between +Dinkie and me. And there's something very admirable in Pauline +Augusta's staid adoration of her dad. She plays up to him, I can see, +without quite knowing she's doing it. She's hungry for his approval, +and happiest, always, in his presence. Then, too, she makes him +forget, for the time at least, his disappointment in a soul-mate who +hasn't quite measured up to expectations! And I devoutly thank the +Master of Life and Love that my solemn old Dinky-Dunk can thus care +for his one and only daughter. It softens him, and keeps the sordid +worries of the moment from vitrifying his heart. It puts a rainbow in +his sky of every-day work, and gives him something to plan and plot +and live for. And he needs it. We all do. It's our human and natural +hunger for companionship. And as he observed not long ago, if that +hunger can't be satisfied at home, we wander off and snatch what we +can on the wing. Some day when they're rich, I overheard Dinky-Dunk +announcing the other night, Pauline Augusta and her Dad are going to +make the Grand Tour of Europe. And there, undoubtedly, do their best +to pick up a Prince of the Royal Blood and have a chateau in Lombardy +and a villa on the Riviera and a standing invitation to all the +Embassy Balls! + +Well, not if I know it. None of that penny-a-liner moonshine for my +daughter. And as she grows older, I feel sure, I'll have more +influence over her. She'll begin to realize that the battle of life +hasn't scarred up for nothing this wary-eyed old mater who's beginning +to know a hawk from a henshaw. I've learned a thing or two in my day, +and one or two of them are going to be passed on to my offspring. + + + + +_Thursday the Fifteenth_ + + +Struthers and I have been house-cleaning, for this is the middle of +May, and our reluctant old northern spring seems to be here for good. +It has been backward, this year, but the last of the mud has gone, and +I hope to have my first setting of chicks out in a couple of days. +Dinkie wants to start riding Buntie to school, but his pater says +otherwise. Gershom goes off every morning, with Calamity Kate hitched +to the old buckboard, with my two kiddies packed in next to him and +provender enough for himself and the kiddies and Calamity Kate under +the seat. The house seems very empty when they are away. But some time +about five, every afternoon, I see them loping back along the trail. +Then comes the welcoming bark of old Bobs, and a raid on the +cooky-jar, and traces of bread-and-jelly on two hungry little faces, +and the familiar old tumult about the reanimated rooms of Casa Grande. +Then Poppsy--I beg her ladyship's pardon, for I mean, of course, +Pauline Augusta--has to duly inspect her dolls to assure herself that +they are both well-behaved and spotless as to apparel, for Pauline +Augusta is a stickler as to decorum and cleanliness; and Dinkie falls +to working on his air-ship, which he is this time making quite +independent of Whinnie, whose last creation along that line betrayed a +disheartening disability for flight. But even this second effort, I'm +afraid, is doomed to failure, for more than once I've seen Dinkie back +away and stand regarding his incompetent flier with a look of +frustration on his face. He is always working over machinery--for he +loves anything with wheels--and I'm pretty well persuaded that the +twentieth-century mania of us grown-ups for picking ourselves to +pieces is nothing more than a development of this childish hunger to +get the cover off things and see the works go round. Dinkie makes +wagons and carts and water-wheels, but some common fatality of +incompetence overtakes them all and they are cast aside for +enterprises more novel and more promising. He announces, now, that he +intends to be an engineer. And that recalls the time when I was +convinced in my own soul that he was destined for a life of art, since +he was forever asking me to draw him "a li'l' man," and later on fell +to drawing them himself. He would do his best to inscribe a circle +and then emboss it with perfectly upright hair, as though the person +in question had just been perusing the most stirring of +penny-dreadfuls. Then he would put in two dots of eyes, and one +abbreviated and vertical line for the nose, and another elongated and +horizontal line for the mouth, and arms with extended and extremely +elocutionary fingers, to say nothing of extremely attenuated legs +which invariably toed-out, to make more discernible the silhouette of +the ponderously booted feet. I have several dozen of these "li'l' men" +carefully treasured in an old cigar-box. But he soon lost interest in +these purely anthropocentric creations and broadened out into the +delineation of boats and cars and wheel-barrows and rocking-chairs and +tea-pots, lying along the floor on his stomach for an hour at a time, +his tongue moving sympathetically with every movement of his pencil. +He held the latter clutched close to the point by his stubby little +fingers. + +I had to call a halt on all such artistry, however, for he startled +me, one day, by suddenly going crosseyed. It came, of course, from +working with his nose too close to the paper. I imagined, with a +sinking heart, that it was an affliction which was to stay with him +for the rest of his natural life. But a night's sleep did much to +restore the over-taxed eye-muscles and before the end of a week they +had entirely righted themselves. + +To-morrow Dinkie will probably want to be an aeronaut, and the next +day a cowboy, and the next an Indian scout, for I notice that his +enthusiasms promptly conform to the stimuli with which he chances to +be confronted. Last Sunday he asked me to read Macaulay's _Horatius_ +to him. I could see, after doing so, that it was going to his head +exactly as a second Clover-Club cocktail goes to the head of a +sub-deb. On Tuesday, when I went out about sun-down to get him to help +me gather the eggs, I found that he had made a sword by nailing a bit +of stick across a slat from the hen-house, and also observed that he +had possessed himself of my boiler-top. So I held back, slightly +puzzled. But later on, hearing much shouting and clouting and banging +of tin, I quietly investigated and found Dinkie in the corral-gate, +holding it against all comers. So earnest was he about it, so rapt was +he in that solemn business of warfare, that I decided to slip away +without letting him see me. He was sixteen long centuries away from +Casa Grande, at that moment. He was afar off on the banks of the +Tiber, defending the Imperial City against Lars Porsena and his +footmen. All Rome was at his back, cheering him on, and every time his +hen-coop slat thumped that shredded old poplar gate-post some proud +son of Tuscany bit the dust. + + + + +_Sunday the Twenty-Fifth_ + + +Duncan, it's plain to see, is still in the doldrums. He is +uncommunicative and moody and goes about his work with a listlessness +which is more and more disturbing to me. He surprised his wife the +other day by addressing her as "Lady Selkirk," for the simple reason, +he later explained, that I propose to be monarch of all I survey, with +none to dispute my domain. And a little later he further intimated +that I was like a miser with a pot of gold, satisfied to live anywhere +so long as my precious family-life could go clinking through my +fingers. + +That was last Sunday--a perfect prairie day--when I sat out on the end +of the wagon-box, watching Poppsy and Dinkie. I sat in the warm +sunlight, in a sort of trance, staring at those two children as they +went about their solemn business of play. They impressed me as two +husky and happy-bodied little beings and I remembered that whatever +prairie-life had cost me, it had not cost me the health of my family. +My two bairns had been free of those illnesses and infections which +come to the city child, and I was glad enough to remember it. But I +was unconscious of Dinky-Dunk's cynic eye on me as I sat there +brooding over my chicks. When he spoke to me, in fact, I was thinking +how odd it was that Josie Langdon, on the very day before her +marriage, should have carried me down to the lower end of Fifth Avenue +and led me into the schoolroom of the Church of the Ascension, and +asked me to study Sorolla's _Triste Herencia_ which hangs there. + +I can still see that wonderful canvas where the foreshore of Valencia, +usually so vivacious with running figures and the brightest of +sunlight on dancing sails, had been made the wine-dark sea of the +pagan questioner with the weight of immemorial human woe to shadow it. +Josie had been asking me about marriage and children, for even she was +knowing her more solemn moments in the midst of all that feverishly +organized merriment. But I was surprised, when she slipped a hand +through my arm, to see a tear run down her nose. So I looked up again +at Sorolla's picture of the naked little cripples snatching at their +moment's joy along the water's edge, at his huddled group of maimed +and cast-off orphans trying to be happy without quite knowing how. I +can still see the stunted little bodies, naked in sunlight that +seemed revealing without being invigorating, clustered about the +guardian figure of the tall old priest in black, the somberly +benignant old figure that towered above the little wrecks on crutches +and faced, as majestic as Millet's _Sower_, as austere and unmoved as +Fate itself, a dark sea overhung by a dark sky. Sorolla was great in +that picture, to my way of thinking. He was great in the manner in +which he attunes nature to a human mood, in which he gives you the +sunlight muffled, in some way, like the sunlight during a partial +eclipse, and keys turbulence down to quietude, like the soft pedal +that falls on a noisy street when a hearse goes by. + +Josie felt it, and I felt it, that wordless thinning down of radiance, +that mysterious holding back of warmth, until it seemed to strike a +chill into the bones. It was the darker wing of Destiny hovering over +man's head, deepening at the same time that it shadows the receding +sky-line, so that even the memory of it, a thousand miles away, could +drain the jocund blitheness out of the open prairie and give an air of +pathos and solitude to my own children playing about my feet. Sorolla, +I remembered, had little ones of his own. He _knew_. Life had taught +him, and in teaching, had enriched his art. For the artist, after all, +is the man who cuts up the loaf of his own heart, and butters it with +beauty, and at tuppence a slice hands it to the hungry children of the +world. + +So when Dinky-Dunk laughed at me, for going into a trance over my own +children, I merely smiled condoningly back at him. I felt vaguely +sorry for him. He wasn't getting out of them what I was getting. He +was being cheated, in some way, out of the very harvest for which he +had sowed and waited. And if he had come to me, in that mood of +relapse, if he had come to me with the slightest trace of humility, +with the slightest touch of entreaty, on his face, I'd have hugged his +salt-and-peppery old head to my bosom and begged to start all over +again with a clean slate.... + +Gershom and I get along much better than I had expected. There's +nothing wrong with the boy except his ineradicable temptation to +impart to you his gratuitous tidbits of information. I can't object, +of course, to Gershom having a college education: what I object to is +his trying to give me one. I don't mind his wisdom, but I do hate to +see him tear the whole tree of knowledge up by the roots and floor +one with it. He has just informed me that there are estimated to be +30,000,000,000,000 red blood corpuscles in this body of mine, and I +made him blink by solemnly challenging him to prove it. Quite +frequently and quite sternly, too, he essays to correct my English. He +reproved me for saying: "Go to it, Gershom!" And he declared I was in +error in saying "The goose hangs high," as that was merely a vulgar +corruption for "The goose whangs high," the "whanging" being the call +of the wild geese high in the air when the weather is settled and +fair. We live and learn! + +But I can't help liking this pedagogic old Gershom who takes himself +and me and all the rest of the world so seriously. I like him because +he shares in my love for Dinkie and stands beside Peter himself in the +fondly foolish belief that Dinkie has somewhere the hidden germ of +greatness in him. Not that my boy is one of those precocious little +bounders who are so precious in the eyes of their parents and so +odious to the eyes of the rest of the world. He is a large-boned boy, +almost a rugged-looking boy, and it is only I, knowing him as I do, +who can fathom the sensibilities housed in that husky young body. +There is a misty broodiness in his eyes which leaves them +indescribably lovely to me as I watch him in his moments of raptness. +But that look doesn't last long, for Dinkie can be rough in play and +at times rough in speech, and deep under the crust of character I +imagine I see traces of his Scottish father in him. I watch with an +eagle eye for any outcroppings of that Caledonian-granite strain in +his make-up. I inspect him as Chinkie used to inspect his fruit-trees +for San Jose scale, for if there is any promise of hardness or cruelty +there I want it killed in the bud. + +But I don't worry as I used to, on that score. He may be rough-built, +but moods cluster thick about him, like butterflies on a shelf of +broken rock. And he is both pliable and responsive. I can shake him, +when in the humor, by the mere telling of a story. I can control his +color, I can excite him and exalt him, and bring him to the verge of +tears, if I care to, by the mere tone of my voice as I read him one of +his favorite tales out of one of Peter's books. But I shrink, in a +way, from toying with those feelings. It seems brutal, cruel, +merciless. For he is, after all, a delicate instrument, to be treated +with delicacy. The soul of him must be kept packed away, like a +violin, in its case of reserve well-padded with discretion. Two +things I see in him: tenseness and beauty. And these are things which +are lost, with rough handling. He shrinks away from brutality. Always, +when he came to the picture of Samson pulling down the pillars of the +temple, in Whinstane Sandy's big old illustrated Bible, he used to +cover with one small hand a certain child on the temple steps as +though to protect to the last that innocent one from the falling +columns and cornices. + +But I'm worried, at times, about Dinky-Dunk's attitude toward the boy. +There are ways in which he demands too much from the child. His father +is often unnecessarily rough in his play with him, seeming to take a +morose delight in goading him to the breaking point and then lamenting +his lack of grit, edging him on to the point of exasperation and then +heaping scorn on him for his weakness. More than once I've seen his +father actually hurt him, although the child was too proud to admit +it. Dinky-Dunk, I think, really wants his boy to be a bigger figure in +the world than his dad. Milord's a middle-aged man now and knows his +limitations. He has realized just how high the supremest high-water +mark of his life will stand. And being human, he must nurse his human +regrets over his failures in life. So now he wishes to see his +thwarted powers come to fuller fruit in his offspring. I'm afraid he'd +even run the risk of sacrificing the boy's happiness for the sake of +knowing Dinkie's wagon was to be hitched to the star of success. For I +know my husband well enough to realize that he has always hankered +after worldly success, that his god, if he had any, has always been +the god of Power. I, too, want to see my son a success. But I want him +to be happy first. I want to see him get some of the things I've been +cheated out of, that I've cheated myself out of. That's the only way +now I can get even with life. I can't live my own days over again. But +I can catch at the trick of living them over again in my Dinkie. + + + + +_Thursday the Twenty-Ninth_ + + +We have arrived at an armistice, Dinky-Dunk and I. It was forced on +us, for things couldn't have gone on in the old intolerable manner. +Dinky-Dunk, I fancy, began to realize that he hadn't been quite fair, +and started making oblique but transparent enough efforts at +appeasement. When he sat down close beside me, and I moved away, he +said in a spirit of exaggerated self-accusation: "I'm afraid I've got +a peach-stain on my reputation!" I retorted, at that, that she had +never impressed me as much of a peach. Whereupon he merely laughed, as +though it were a joke out of a Midnight Revue. Then he clipped a +luridly illustrated advertisement of a nerve-medicine out of his +newspaper and pinned it on my bedroom door, after I had ignored his +tentative knock thereon the night before. The picture showed an anemic +and woebegone couple haggling and shaking their fists at each other, +while a large caption announced that "Thousands of Married Folks Lead +a Cat and Dog Life--Are Cross, Crabbed and Grumpy!"--all of which +could be obviated if they used Oxygated Iron. + +What made it funny, of course, was the ridiculousness of the drawing. +Then Dinky-Dunk, right before the blushing Gershom, accused me of +being a love-piker. I could sniff which way the wind was blowing, but +I sat tight. Then, to cap the climax, my husband announced that he had +something for me which was surely going to melt my mean old prairie +heart. And late that afternoon he came trundling up to Casa Grande +with nothing more nor less than an old prairie-schooner. + +It startled me, when I first caught sight of it. But its acquisition +was not so miraculous as it might have seemed. Dinky-Dunk, who is a +born dickerer, has been trading some of his ranch-stock for town-lots +on the outskirts of Buckhorn. On the back of one of these lots stood a +tumble-down wooden building, and hidden away in this building was the +prairie-schooner. Something about it had caught his fancy, so he had +insisted that it be included in the deal. And home he brought it, with +Tithonus and Tumble-Weed yoked to its antique tongue and his own +Stetsoned figure high on the driving seat. They had told Dinky-Dunk it +wasn't a really-truly authentic prairie-schooner, since practically +all of the trekking north of the Fiftieth Parallel has been done by +means of the Red River cart. But Dinky-Dunk, after looking more +carefully over the heavy-timbered running-gear and the cumbersome +iron-work, and discovering even the sturdy hooks under its belly from +which the pails and pots of earlier travelers must have hung, +concluded that it was one of the genuine old-timers, one of the +"Murphies" once driven by a "bull-whacker" and drawn by "wheelers" and +"pointers." Where it originally came from, Heaven only knows. But it +had been used, five years before, for a centenary procession in the +provincial capital and had emerged into the open again last summer for +a town-booming _Rodeo_ twenty miles down the steel from Buckhorn. It +looked like the dinosaur skeleton in the Museum of Natural History, +with every vestige of its tarpaulin top gone. But Whinnie has already +sewed together a canvas covering for its weather-beaten old roof-ribs, +and has put clean wheat-straw in its box-bottom, so that it makes a +kingly place for my two kiddies to play. I even spotted Dinkie, +enthroned high on the big driving-seat, with a broken binder-whip in +his hand, imagining he was one of the original Forty-Niners pioneering +along the unknown frontiers of an unknown land. I could see him duck +at imaginary arrows and frenziedly defend his family from imaginary +Sioux with an imaginary musket. And I stood beside it this morning, +dreaming of the adventures it must have lumbered through, of the +freight it must have carried and the hopes it must have ferried as it +once crawled westward along the floor of the world, from water-hole to +lonely water-hole. I've been wondering if certain perforations in its +side-boards can be bullet-holes and if certain dents and abrasions in +its timbers mean the hostile arrows of skulking Apaches when women and +children crouched low behind the ramparts of this tiny wooden +fortress. I can't help picturing what those women and children had to +endure, and how trivial, after all, are our puny hardships compared +with theirs. + +And I don't intend to dwell on those hardships. I'm holding out the +hand of compromise to my fellow-trekker. Existence is only a +prairie-schooner, and we have to accommodate ourselves to it. And I +thank Heaven now that I can see things more clearly and accept them +more quietly. That's a lesson Time teaches us. And Father Time, after +all, has to hand us something to make up for so mercilessly +permitting us to grow old. It leaves us more tolerant. We're not +allowed to demand more life, but we can at least ask for more light. +So I intend to be cool-headedly rational about it all. I'm going to +keep Reason on her throne. I'm going to be a bitter-ender, in at least +one thing: I'm going to stick to my Dinky-Dunk to the last ditch. I'm +going to patch up the old top and forget the old scars. For we're in +the same schooner, and we must make the most of it. And if I have to +eat my pot of honey on the grave of all our older hopes, I'm at least +going to dig away at that pot until its bottom is scraped clean. I'm +going to remain the neck-or-nothing woman I once prided myself on +being. I'm even going to overlook Dinky-Dunk's casual cruelty in +announcing, when I half-jokingly inquired why he preferred other women +to his own Better-Half, that no horse eats hay after being turned out +to fresh grass. I'm going on, I repeat, no matter what happens. I'm +going on to the desperate end, like my own Dinkie with the +chocolate-cake when I warned him he'd burst if he dared to eat another +piece and he responded: "Then pass the cake, Mummy--and everybody +stand back!" + + + + +_Tuesday the Fourth_ + + +_Sursum corda_ is the word--so here goes! I am determined to be blithe +and keep the salt of humor sprinkled thick across the butter-crock of +concession. Dinky-Dunk watches me with a guarded and wary eye and +Pauline Augusta does not always approve of me. Yesterday, when I got +on Briquette and made that fire-eater jump the two rain-barrels put +end to end Dinky-Dunk told me I was too old to be taking a chance like +that. So I promptly and deliberately turned a somersault on the +prairie-sod, just to show him I wasn't the old lady he was trying to +make me out. Gershom, who'd just got back with the children and was +unhitching Calamity Kate, retreated with his eyebrows up, toward the +stable. And on the youthful face of Pauline Augusta I saw nothing but +pained incredulity touched with reproof, for Poppsy is not a believer +in the indecorous. She has herself staidly intimated that she'd prefer +the rest of the family to address her as "Pauline Augusta" instead of +"Poppsy" which still so unwittingly creeps into our talk. So +hereafter we must be more careful. For Pauline Augusta can already sew +a fine seam and array her seven dolls with a preciseness and neatness +which is to be highly commended. + +On Saturday, when we motored into Buckhorn for supplies, I escorted +Pauline Augusta to Hunk Granby, the town barber, to have her hair cut +Dutch. Her lip quivered and she gave every indication of an outbreak, +for she was mortally afraid of that strange man and his still stranger +clipping-machine. But I spotted a concert-guitar on a bench at the +back of Hunk's emporium and as it was the noon-hour and there was no +audience, I rendered a jazz _obbligato_ to the snip of the scissors. + +"Say, Birdie, you'll sure have me buck and wing dancin' if you keep +that up!" remarked the man of the shears. I merely smiled and gave him +_Texas Tommy_, _cum gusto_, whereupon he acknowledged he was having +difficulty in making his feet behave. We became quite a companionable +little family, in fact, as the bobbing process went on, and when +Dinky-Dunk called for us as he'd promised he was patently scandalized +to find his superannuated old soul-mate sight-reading _When Katy +Couldn't Katy Wouldn't_--it was a new one to me--in the second ragged +plush shaving-chair of a none too clean barber-shop festooned with +lithographs which would have made old Anthony Comstock turn in his +grave. But you have to be feathered to the toes like a ptarmigan in +this northern country so that rough ways and rough winds can't strike +a chill into you. The barber, in fact, refused to take any money for +Dutching my small daughter's hair, proclaiming that the music was more +than worth it. But my husband, with a dangerous light in his eye, +insisted on leaving four bits on the edge of the shelf loaded down +with bottled beautifiers, and escorted us out to the muddy old +devil-wagon where Dinkie sat awaiting us. + +"Dinky-Dunk," I said with a perfectly straight face as we climbed in, +"what is it gives me such a mysterious influence over men?" + +Instead of answering me, he merely ground his gears as though they had +been his own teeth. So I repeated my question. + +"Why don't you ask that school-teacher of yours?" he demanded. + +"But what," I inquired, "has Gershom got to do with it?" + +He turned and inspected me with such a pointed stare that we nearly +ran into a Bain wagon full of bagged grain. + +"You don't suppose I can't see that that beanpole's fallen in love +with you?" he rudely and raucously challenged. + +"Why, I feel exactly like a mother to that poor boy," I innocently +protested. + +"Mother nothing!" snorted my lord and master. "Any fool could see he's +going mushy on you!" + +I pretended to be less surprised than I really was, but it gave me +considerable to think over. My husband was wrong, in a way, but no +woman feels bad at the thought that somebody is fond of her. It's nice +to know there's a heart or two at which one can still warm one's +outstretched hands. The short-cut to ruin, with a man, is the +knowledge that women are fond of him. But let a woman know that she is +not unloved and she walks the streets of Heaven, to say nothing of +nearly breaking her neck to make herself worthy of those transporting +affections. + +But I soon had other things to think of, that afternoon, for Dinkie +and I had a little secret shopping to do. And in the midst of it I +caught the familiar tawny look which occasionally comes into my +man-child's eyes. It's the look of dreaming, the look of brooding +wildness where some unknown Celtic great-great-grandfather of a +great-great-grandfather stirs in his moorland grave like a collie-dog +in his afternoon sleep. And it all arose out of nothing more than a +blind beggar sitting on an upturned nail-keg at the edge of the +sidewalk and rather miraculously playing a mouth-organ and a guitar at +one and the same time. The guitar was a dog-eared old instrument that +had most decidedly seen better days, stained and bruised and +greasy-looking along the shank. The mouth-organ was held in position +by two wires that went about the beggar's neck, to leave his hands +free for strumming on the larger instrument. The music he made was +simple enough, rudimentary old waltz-tunes and plaintive old airs that +I hadn't heard for years. But I could see it go straight to the head +of my boy. His intent young face took on the fierce emptiness of a +Barres lion overlooking some time-worn desert. He forgot me, and he +forgot the shopping that had kept him awake about half the night, and +he forgot Buckhorn and the fact that he was a small boy on the streets +of a bald little prairie town. He was thousands of years and thousands +of miles away from me. He was a king's son in Babylon, commanding the +court-musicians to make sweet discourse for him. He was Saul +harkening to David. He was a dreamy-eyed Pict listening to music +wafted at dusk from a Roman camp about which helmeted sentries paced. +He was a medieval prince, falsely imprisoned, leaning from dark and +lonely towers to catch the strains of some wandering troubadour from +his native Southlands. He was a Magyar chieftain listening to the +mountain-side music of valleyed goat-herders with a touch of madness +to it. It engulfed him and entranced him and awoke ancestral tom-toms +in his blood. And I waited beside him until the afternoon sunlight +grew thinner and paler and my legs grew tired, for I knew that his +hungry little soul was being fed. His eye met mine, when it was all +over, but he had nothing to say. I could see, however, that he had +been stirred to the depths,--and by a tin mouth-organ and a +greasy-sided guitar! + +To-night I found Dinkie poring over the pictures in my Knight edition +of Shakespeare. He seemed especially impressed, as I stopped and +looked over his shoulder, by a steel engraving of Gerome's _Death of +Caesar_, where the murdered emperor lies stretched out on the floor of +the Forum, now all but empty, with the last of the Senators crowding +out through the door. Two of the senatorial chairs are overturned, +and Caesar's throne lies face-down on the dais steps. So Dinkie began +asking questions about a drama which he could not quite comprehend. +But they were as nothing to the questions he asked when he turned to +another of the Gerome pictures, this one being the familiar old +_Cleopatra and Caesar_. He wanted to know why the lady hadn't more +clothes on, and why the big black man was hiding down behind her, and +what Caesar was writing a letter for, and why he was looking at the +lady the way he did. So, glancing about to make sure that Dinky-Dunk +was within ear-shot, I did my best to explain the situation to little +Dinkie. + +"Caesar, my son, was a man who set out in the world to be a great +conqueror. But when he got quite bald, as you may see by the picture, +and had reached middle age, he forgot about being a great conqueror. +He even forgot about being so comfortably middle-aged and that it was +not easy for a man of his years to tumble gracefully into love, for +those romantic impulses, my son, are associated more with +irresponsible youth and are apt to be called by rather an ugly name +when they occur in advanced years. But Caesar fell in love with the +lady you see in the picture, whose name was Cleopatra and who was one +of the greatest man-eaters that ever came out of Egypt. She had a +weakness for big strong men, and although certain authorities have +claimed that she was a small and hairy person with a very uncertain +temper, she undoubtedly set a very good table and made her gentlemen +friends very comfortable, for Caesar stayed feasting and forgetting +himself for nearly a year with her. It must have been very pleasant, +for Caesar loved power, and intended to be one of the big men of his +time. But the lady also loved power, and was undoubtedly glad to see +that she could make Caesar forget about going home, though it was too +bad that he forgot, for always, even after he had lived to write about +all the great things he had done in the world, people remembered more +about his rather absurd infatuation for the lady than about all the +battles he had won and all the prizes he had captured. And the lady, +of course----" + +But I was interrupted at this point. And it was by Dinky-Dunk. + +"Oh, hell!" he said as he flung down his paper and strode out into the +other room. And those exits, I remembered, were getting to be a bit of +a habit with my harried old Diddums. + + + + +_Sunday the Fifth_ + + +The Day of Rest seems to be the only day left to me now for my +writing. There are no idlers in the neighborhood of Casa Grande. The +days are becoming incredibly long, but they still seem over-short for +all there is to do. The men are much too busy on the land to give +material thought to any thing so womanish as a kitchen-garden. So I +have my own garden to see to. And sometimes I work there until I'm +almost ready to drop. On a couple of nights, recently, when it came +watering-time, even these endless evenings had slipped into such +darkness that I could scarcely see the plants I was so laboriously +irrigating by hand. It wasn't until the water turned the soil black +that the growing green stood pallidly out against the mothering dark +earth.... But it is delightful work. I really love it. And I love to +see things growing. After the bringing up of a family, the bringing up +of a garden surely comes next. + +Yet too much work, I find, can make tempers a trifle short. I spoke +rather sharply to Dinky-Dunk yesterday regarding the folly of leaving +firearms about the house where children can reach them. And he was +equally snappy as he flung his ugly old Colt in its ugly old holster +up over the top corner of our book-cabinet. So, to get even with him, +when Dinkie came in with some sort of wide-petaled field-flower and +asked if I didn't want my fortune told, I announced I rather fancied +it was pretty well told already.... Scotty, by the way, now follows +Dinkie to school and waits outside and comes loping home with him +again. And my two bairns have a new and highly poetic occupation. It +is that of patiently garnering youthful potato-bugs and squashing the +accumulated harvest between two bricks. + + + + +_Sunday the Twelth_ + + +I have been examining Gershom with a more interested eye. And when he +changed color, under that inspection, I apologized for making him +blush. And as that only added to his embarrassment, I artlessly asked +him what a blush really was. That, of course, was throwing the rabbit +straight back into the brier-patch, as far as Gershom was concerned. +For he promptly and meticulously informed me that a blush was a +miniature epilepsy, a vasomotor impulse leading to the dilation or +constriction of the facial blood-vessels, some psychologists even +claiming the blush to be a vestigial survival of the prehistoric +flight-effort of the heart, coming from the era of marriage by +capture, when to be openly admired meant imminent danger. + +"That isn't a bit pretty," I told Gershom. "It's as horrid as what my +husband said about handshaking originating in man's desire to be dead +sure his gentleman friend didn't have a knife up his sleeve, for use +before the greeting was over. It would have been so much nicer, +Gershom, if you could have told me that the first blush was born on +the same day as the first kiss." + +"Kissing," that youth solemnly informed me, "was quite unknown to +primitive man. It evolved, in fact, out of the entirely +self-protective practice of smelling, to determine the health of a +prospective mate, though this in turn evolved into the ceremonial +habit of the rubbing together of noses, which is still the form of +affectionate salutation largely prevalent among the natives of the +South Sea Islands." + +"What a perfectly horrible origin for such a heavenly pastime," I just +as solemnly announced to Gershom, who studied me with a stern and +guarded eye, and having partaken of his eleventh flap-jack, escaped to +the stable and the matutinal task of harnessing Calamity Kate. + + + + +_Sunday the Second_ + + +Summer is here, in earnest, and the last few days have been hot and +windless. School is over, for the next eight weeks, and I shall have +my kiddies close beside me. Gershom, after a ten-day trip down to +Minneapolis for books and clothes, is going to come back to Casa +Grande and help Dinky-Dunk on the land, as long as the holidays last. +He thinks it will build him up a bit. He is also solemnly anxious to +study music. He feels it would round out his accomplishments, which, +he acknowledged, have threatened to become overwhelmingly scientific. +So I'm to give Gershom music lessons in exchange for his tutoring +Dinkie. They will be rather awful, I'm afraid, for Gershom has about +as much music in his honest old soul as Calamity Kate. I may not teach +him much. But all the time, I know, I will be learning a great deal +from Gershom. He informed me, last night, that he had carefully +computed that the Bible mentioned nineteen different precious stones, +one hundred and four trees or plants, six metals, thirty-five +animals, thirty-nine birds, six fishes, twenty insects, and eleven +reptiles. + +As I've already said, summer is here. But it doesn't seem to mean as +much to me as it used to, for my interests have been taken away from +the land and more and more walled up about my family. Dinky-Dunk's +grain, however, has come along satisfactorily, and there is every +promise of a good crop. Yet this entirely fails to elate my husband. +Every small mischance is a sort of music-cue nowadays to start him +singing about the monotony of prairie-life. Ranching, he protests, +isn't the easy game it used to be, now that cattle can't be fattened +on the open range and now that wheat itself is so much lower in price. +One has to work for one's money, and watch every dollar. And my +Diddums keeps railing about the government doing so little for the +farmer and driving the men off the land into the cities. He has fallen +into the habit of protesting he can see nothing much in life as a +back-township hay-tosser and that all the big chances are now in the +big centers. I had been hoping that this was a new form of +spring-fever which would eventually work its way out of his system. +But I can see now that the matter is something more mental than +physical. He hasn't lost his strength, but he has lost his driving +power. He is healthy enough, Heaven knows. Indeed, he impresses me as +being a bit too much that way, for he has quite lost his old-time lean +and hungry look and betrays a tendency to take on a ventral contour +unmistakably aldermanic. He may be heavy, but he is hard-muscled and +brown as an old meerschaum. There is a canker, however, somewhere +about the core of his heart. And I can see him more clearly than I +used to. He is a strong man, but he is a strong man without +earnestness. And being such, I vaguely apprehend in him some splendid +failure. For the wings that soar to success in this world are plumed +with faith and feathered with conviction. + +It did not surprise me this morning when Dinky-Dunk announced that he +felt a trifle stale and suggested that the family take a holiday on +Tuesday and trek out to Dead-Horse Lake for the day. We're to hitch +Tumble-Weed and Tithonus to the old prairie-schooner--for we'll be +taking side-trails where no car could venture--and pike off for a +whole blessed day of care-free picnicking. So to-morrow Struthers and +I will be solemnly busy in the kitchen concocting suitable dishes to +be taken along in the old grub-box, and when that is over we'll patch +together something in the form of bathing-suits, for there'll be a +chance for a dip in the slough-water, and our kiddies have arrived at +an age imposing fit and proper apparel on their sadly pagan but +chastened parents. + + + + +_Wednesday the Fifth_ + + +We have had our day at Dead-Horse Lake, but it wasn't the happy event +I had anticipated. Worldly happiness, I begin to feel, usually dies +a-borning: it makes me think of wistaria-bloom, for invariably one end +is withering away before the other end is even in flower. At any rate, +we were off early, the weather was perfect, and the sky was an +inverted tureen of lazulite blue. Dinkie drove the team part of the +way, his dad smoked beside him up on the big driving-seat, and I +raised my voice in song until Pauline Augusta fell asleep and had to +be bedded down in the wagon-straw and covered with a blanket. + +Dead-Horse Lake is really a slough, dolorously named because a near-by +rancher once lost eight horses therein, the foolish animals wandering +out on ice that was too thin to hold them up. + +We were hungry by the time we had hobbled out our teams and gathered +wood and made a fire. And after dinner Dinky-Dunk fell asleep and the +children and I tried to weave a willow basket, which wasn't a +success. Poppsy, in fact, cut her finger with her pater's pocket-knife +and because of this physical disability declined to don her +bathing-suit when we made ready for the water. + +The slough-water was enticingly warm, under the hot July sun, and we +ventured in at the west end where a firmer lip of sand and alkali gave +us footing. And I enjoyed the swim, although Dinky-Dunk made fun of my +improvised bathing-suit. It seemed like old times, to bask lazily in +the sun and float about on my back with my fingers linked under my +head. My lord and master even acknowledged that my figure wasn't so +bad as he had expected, in a lady of my years. I splashed him for +that, and he dove for my ankles, and nearly drowned me before I could +get away. + +It was all light-hearted enough, until Dinky-Dunk happened to notice +that Dinkie wasn't enjoying the water as an able-bodied youngster +ought. The child, in fact, was afraid of it--which was only natural, +remembering what a land-bird he had been all his life. His father, +apparently, decided to carry him out and give him a swimming-lesson. + +I was on shore by this time, trying to sun out my sodden mop of hair, +which I had fondly imagined I could keep dry. I heard Dinkie's cry as +his father captured him, and I called out to Dinky-Dunk, through my +combed out tresses, to have a heart. + +Dinky-Dunk called back that the Indian way, after all, was the only +way to teach a youngster. I didn't give much thought to the matter +until the two of them were out in deeper water and I heard Dinkie's +scream of stark terror. It came home to me then that the Indian method +in such things was to toss the child into deep water and leave him +there to struggle for his life. + +Dinky-Dunk, I suppose, hadn't intended to do quite that. But the boy +was naturally terrified at being carried out beyond his depth, and +when I looked up I could see his bony little body struggling to free +itself. That timidity, I take it, angered the boy's father. And he +intended to cure it. He was doing his best, in fact, to fling the +clutching and clawing little body away from him when I heard those +repeated short screams of horror and promptly took a hand in the +matter. Something snapped in my skull, and I saw red. I hated my +husband for what he was doing. I hated him for the mere thought that +he could do it. And I hated him for calling out that this was what +people got by mollycoddling their children. + +But that didn't stop me. I made for Dinky-Dunk like a hundred-weight +of wildcats. I went through the water like a hell-diver, and without +quite knowing what I was doing I got hold of him and tried to garrote +him. I don't remember what I said, but I have a hazy idea it was not +the most ladylike of language. He stared at me, as I tore Dinkie away +from him, stared at me with a hard and slightly incredulous eye. For +I'm afraid I was ready to fight with my teeth and nails, if need be, +and I suppose my expression wasn't altogether angelic. We were both +shaking, at any rate, when we got back to dry land. Dinky-Dunk stood +staring at us, for a silent moment or two, with a look of black +disgust on his wet face. I'm even afraid it was something more than +disgust. Then he strode away and proceeded to dress on the other side +of the prairie-schooner, without so much as a second look at us. And +then he went off for the horses, absenting himself a quite unnecessary +length of time. But I took advantage of that to have a talk with +Dinkie. + +"Dinkie," I said, "you and I are going to walk out into that water, +and this time you're not going to be afraid!" + +I could see his eye searching mine, although he did not speak. + +I put one hand on the wet tangle of his hair. + +"Will you come?" I asked him. + +He took a deep breath. Then he looked at the slough-water. Then he +looked back into my eyes. + +"Yes," he said, though I noticed his lips were not so red as usual. + +So side by side and hand in hand the two of us walked out into +Dead-Horse Lake. His eyes questioned me, once, as the water came up +about his armpits. But he shut his teeth tight and made no effort to +draw back. I could see the involuntary spasms of his chest as that +terrifying flood closed in about his little body, yet he was ready +enough to show me he wasn't a coward. And when I saw that he had met +and faced his ordeal I turned him about and led him quietly back to +land. We were both prouder and happier for what had just happened. We +didn't even need to talk about it, for each knew that the other +understood. What still disturbs me, though, is something not in my +boy's make-up, but in my own. During the long and silent drive home I +noticed a mark on my husband's neck. And I was the termagant who must +have put it there, though I have no memory of doing so. But from it I +realize that I haven't the control over myself every civilized and +self-respecting woman should have. I begin to see that I can't +altogether trust myself where my female-of-the-species affections are +involved. I'm no better, I'm afraid, than the Bengal tigress which +Dinky-Dunk once intimated I was, the Bengal tigress who will battle so +unreasoningly for her offspring. It may be natural in mothers, whether +they wear fur or feathers or lisle-thread stockings--but it worries +me. I was an engine running wild. And when you run wild you are apt to +run into catastrophe. + + + + +_Friday the Seventh_ + + +Dinky-Dunk is on his dignity. He has put a fence around himself to +keep me at a distance, the same as he puts a fence around his +haystacks to keep off the cattle. We are coolly polite to each other, +but that is as far as it goes. There is something radically wrong with +this home, as a home, but I seem helpless to put the matter right. +It's about all I have left, in this life of mine, but I'm in some way +failing in my duty as a house-wife. "Home" is a beautiful word, and +home-life should be beautiful. Any sacrifice and any concession a +woman is willing to make to keep that home, and to keep ugliness out +of it, ought to be well considered by the judge of her final +destinies. I'm ready to do my part, but I don't know where to begin. +I'm depressed by a teasing sense of frustration, not quite tangible +enough to fight, like cobwebs across your face. It's not easy to carry +around the milk of human kindness after they've pretty well kicked the +bottom out of your can! + +Torrid and tiring are these almost endless summer days. But it's what +the grain needs, and who am I to look this gift-horse of heat in the +face. Yet there are two things, I must confess, in which the prairie +is sadly lacking. One is trees; and the other is shade, the cool green +sun-filtering shade of woodlands where birds can sing and mossy little +brooks can babble. I've been longing all day for just an hour up in an +English cherry tree, with the pectoral smell of the leaves against my +face and the chance of eating at least half my own weight of fresh +fruit. But even in the matter of its treelessness, I'm told, the +prairie is reforming. There are men living who remember when there +were no trees west of Brandon, except in the coulees and the +river-bottoms. Now that fire no longer runs wild, however, the trees +are creeping in, mile by mile and season by season. Already the +eastern line of natural bush country reaches to about ten miles from +Regina two hundred miles west. Oxbow and Estevan, Dinky-Dunk once told +me, had no trees whatever when first settled, though much of that +country now has a comfortable array of bluffs. And forestry, of +course, is giving nature a friendly push along, in the matter. In the +meantime, we have to accommodate ourselves to the conditions that +prevail, just as the birds of the air must do. Here the haughty crow +of the east is compelled to nest in the low willows of the coulee and +raise its young within hand-reach of mother earth. Like our women, it +can enjoy very little privacy of family life. The only thing that +saves us and the crows, I suppose, is that the men-folks of this +country are too preoccupied with their own ends to go around +bird-nesting. They are too busy to break up homes, either in +willow-tops or women's hearts.... I ought to be satisfied. But I've +been dogged, this last day or two, by a longing to be scudding in a +single-sticker off Orienta Point again or to motor-cruise once more +along the Sound in a smother of spray. + + + + +_Thursday the Thirteenth_ + + +Dinky-Dunk has been called to Calgary on business. It sounds simple +enough, in these Unpretentious Annals of an Unloved Worm, but I can't +help feeling that it marks a trivially significant divide in the trend +of things. It depresses me more than I can explain. My depression, I +imagine, comes mostly from the manner in which Duncan went. He was +matter-of-fact enough about it all, but I can't get rid of the +impression that he went with a feeling very much like relief. His +manner, at any rate, was not one to invite cross-examination, and he +insisted, to the end, on regarding his departure as an every-day +incident in the life of a preoccupied rancher. So I caught my cue from +him, and was as quiet about it all as he could have wished. But under +the crust was the volcano.... + +The trouble with the tragedies of real life is that they are never +clear-cut. It takes art to weave a selvage about them or fit them into +a frame. But in reality they're as ragged and nebulous as +wind-clouds. The days drag on into weeks, and the weeks into months, +and life on the surface seems to be running on, the same as before. +There's the same superficial play of all the superficial old forces, +but in the depths are dangers and uglinesses and sullen bombs of +emotional TNT we daren't even touch! + +Heigho! I nearly forgot my _sursum-corda_ role. And didn't old Doctor +Johnson say that peevishness was the vice of narrow minds? So here's +where we tighten up the belt a bit. But we humans, who come into the +world alone, and go out of it alone, are always hungering for +companionship which we can't quite find. Our souls are islands, with a +coral-reef of reserve built up about them. Last night, when I was +patching some of Gershom's undies for him, I wickedly worked an +arrow-pierced heart, in red yarn, on one leg of his B.V.D.'s. This +morning, I noticed, his eye evaded mine and there was marked +constraint in his manner. I even begin to detect unmistakable signs of +nervousness in him when we happen to be alone together. And during his +last music lesson there was a _vibrata_ of emotion in his voice which +made me think of an April frog in a slough-end. + +Even my little Dinkie, day before yesterday, asked me if I'd mind not +bathing him any more. He explained that he thought he could manage +very nicely by himself now. It seemed trivial enough, and yet, in a +way, it was momentous. I am to be denied the luxury of tubbing my own +child. I, who always loved even the smell of that earthy and +soil-grubbing young body, who could love it when it wasn't any too +clean and could glory in its musky and animal-like odors as well as +the satin-shine of the light on its well-soaped little ribs, must now +stand aside before the reservations of sex. It makes me feel that I've +reached still another divide on the continent of motherhood. + +This afternoon, when I wandered into the study, I observed Dinkie +stooping over a Chesterfield pillow with his right hand upraised in a +perplexingly dramatic manner. He turned scarlet when he saw me +standing there watching him. But the question in my eyes did not +escape him. + +"I was pr'tendin' to be King Arthur when he found out Guinevere was in +love with Launcelot," he rather lamely explained as he walked away to +the window and stood staring out over the prairie. But for the life of +me I can't understand what should have turned his thoughts into that +particular channel of romance. Those are matters with which the young +and the innocent should have nothing to do. They are matters, in fact, +which it behooves even the old and the wary to eschew. + + + + +_Sunday the Sixteenth_ + + +It seems strange, in such golden summer weather, that every man and +woman and child on this sunbathed footstool of God shouldn't be sanely +and supremely happy.... My husband, I am glad to say, is once more +back in his home. And I have been realizing, the last few days, that +home is an empty and foolish place without its man about. It's a ship +without a captain, a clan without a chief. Yet I found it both +depressing and humbling to be brought once more face to face with that +particular fact. + +Dinky-Dunk, on the other hand, has come back with both an odd sense of +elation and an odd sense of estrangement. He has taken on a vague +something which I find it impossible to define. He is blither and at +the same time he is more solemnly abstracted. And he protests that his +journey was a success. + +"I'm going to ride two horses, from now on," he announced to me this +morning. "I've got my chance and I'm going to grab it. I've swapped +my Buckhorn lots for some inside Calgary stuff and I'm lumping +everything that's left of my Coast deal for a third-interest in those +Barcona coal-fields. There's a quarter of a million waiting there for +the people with money enough to swing it. And I'm going to edge in +while it's still open." + +"But is it possible to ride two horses?" I asked, waywardly depressed +by all this new-found optimism. + +"It's _got_ to be possible, until we find out which horse is the +better traveler," announced Dinky-Dunk. Then he added, without caring +to meet my eye: "And I can't say I see much promise of action out of +this particular end of the team." + +I must have flamed red, at that speech, for I thought at the moment he +was referring to me. It was only after I'd turned the thing over in my +mind, as I helped Struthers put together our new butter-worker, that I +saw he really referred to Casa Grande. But my husband knows I will +never part with this ranch. He will never be so foolish as to ask me +to do that. Yet one thing is plain. His heart is no longer here. He +will stick to this prairie farm of ours only for what he can get out +of it. + +Dinkie warmed the cockles of my heart by telling me this afternoon +when we were out salting the horses that he never wanted to go away +from Casa Grande and his mummy. The child, I imagine, had overheard +some of this morning's talk. He put his arm around my knees and hugged +me tight. And I could see the tawny look come into his hazel eyes +speckled with brown. My Dinkie is a prairie child. His soul is not a +cramped little soul, but has depth and wideness and undiscerned +mysteries. + + + + +_Sunday the Thirtieth_ + + +Two weeks have slipped by. Two weeks have gone, and left no record of +their going. But a prairie home is a terribly busy one, at times, and +it's idleness that leads to the ink-pot. I'm still trying to make the +best of a none too promising situation, and I'll thole through, as +Whinstane Sandy puts it. After breakfast this morning, in fact, when +Pauline Augusta was swept by one of those little gales of lonesomeness +to which children and women are so mysteriously subjected, she climbed +up into my lap and I rocked her on my shoulder as I might have rocked +a baby. Dinky-Dunk wandered in and inspected that performance with a +slightly satiric eye. So, resenting his expression, I promptly began +to sing: + + "Bye-bye, Baby Bunting, + Daddy's gone a-hunting, + To gather up a pile of tin + To wrap the Baby Bunting in!" + +Dinky-Dunk, when the significance of this lilted flippancy of mine +had sunk home, regarded me with a narrowed and none too friendly eye. + +"Feeling a bit larkier than usual this morning, aren't you?" he +inquired with what was merely a pretense at carelessness. + +It was merely a pretense, I know, because we'd been over the old +ground the night before, and the excursion hadn't added greatly to the +happiness of either of us. Duncan, in fact, had rather horrified me by +actually asking if I thought there was a chance of his borrowing +eleven thousand dollars from Peter Ketley. + +"We can't all trade on that man's generosity!" I cried, without giving +much thought to the manner in which I was expressing myself. + +"Oh, _that's_ the way you feel about it!" retorted my husband. And I +could see his face harden into Scotch granite. I could also see the +look of perplexity in my small son's eyes as he stood studying his +father. + +"Is there anything abnormal in my feeling the way I do?" I parried, +resenting the beetling brow of the Dour Man. + +"Not if you regard him as your personal and particular fairy +god-father," retorted my husband. + +"I've no more reason for regarding him as that," I said as calmly as +I could, "than I have for regarding him as a professional +money-lender." + +Duncan must have seen from my face that it would be dangerous to go +much further. So he merely shrugged a flippant shoulder. + +"They tell me he's got more money than he knows what to do with," he +said with a heavy jocularity which couldn't quite rise. + +"Then lightening his burdens is a form of charity we can scarcely +afford to indulge in," I none too graciously remarked. And I saw my +husband's face harden again. + +"Well, I've got to have ready money and I've got to have it before the +year's out," was his retort. He told me, when the air had cleared a +little, that he'd have to open an office in Calgary as soon as +harvesting was over. There was already too much at stake to take +chances. Then he asked me if there were any circumstances under which +I'd be willing to sell Casa Grande. And I told him, quite promptly and +quite definitely, that there was none. + +"Then how about the old Harris Ranch?" he finally inquired. + +"But why should we sell that?" I asked. Alabama Ranch, I knew, was in +my name, and I had always regarded it as a sort of nest-egg for the +children. It was something put by for a rainy day, something to fall +back on, if ill-luck ever overtook us again. + +"Because I can double and treble every dollar we get out of it, inside +of a year," averred Dinky-Dunk. + +"But how am I to know that?" I contended, hating to seem hard and +selfish and narrow in the teeth of an ambitious man's enterprise. + +"You'd have to take my word for it," retorted my husband. + +"But we've more than ourselves to consider," I contended, knowing he'd +merely scoff at that harping on the old string of the children. + +"That's why I intend to get out of this rut!" he cried with unexpected +bitterness. And a few minutes later he made the suggestion that he'd +deed Casa Grande entirely over to me if I'd consent to the sale of +Alabama Ranch and give him a chance to swing the bigger plans he +intended to swing. + +The suggestion rather took my breath away. My rustic soul, I suppose, +is stupidly averse to change. But I realize that when you travel in +double-harness you can't forever pull back on your team-mate. So I've +asked Dinky-Dunk to give me a few days to think the thing over. + + + + +_Wednesday the Second_ + + +Casa Grande has had an invasion of visitors. It was precious old Percy +and his Olga who blew in on us, after being swallowed up by the Big +Silence for almost four long years. They came without warning, which +is the free and easy way of the westerner, appearing in a +mud-splattered and dust-covered Ford that had carried them blithely +over two hundred and thirty miles of prairie trails. And with them +they brought a quartet of rampageous young buckaroos who promptly +turned our sedate homestead into a rodeo. + +Percy himself is browner and stouter and more rubicund than I might +have expected, with just a sprinkling of gray under his lopsided +Stetson to announce that Time hasn't been standing still for any of +us. But one would never have taken him for an ex-lunger. And there is +a wholesomeness about the man, for all his quietness, which draws one +to him. Olga herself still again impressed me as a Zorn etching come +to life, as a Norse myth in petticoats, with the same old largeness of +limb and the same old suggestion of sky-line vastnesses about her. She +still looks as though the Lord had made her when the world was young +and the women of Homer did their spinning in the sunlight. Some +earlier touch of morning freshness is gone from her, it's true, for +you can't move about with four little toddlers in your wake and still +suggest the budding vine. But that morning freshness has been +supplanted by a full and mellow noonday contentedness which is not +without its placid appeal. To her husband, at any rate, she seems +mysteriously perfect. He can still sit and stare at her with a +startlingly uxorious eye. And she, in turn, bathes him in that pale +lunar stare of meditative approval which says plainer than words just +how much her "man" means to her. + +Percy and his family stayed overnight with us and hit the trail again +yesterday morning. An old friend of Percy's from Brasenose has taken a +parish some forty odd miles south of Buckhorn--a parish, by the way, +which ought to shake a little of the Oxford dreaminess out of his +system--and Olga and her husband are "packing" their newly-arrived +Toddler Number Four down to the new curate to have him christened. + +We were all a bit shy and constrained, during our first hour together +but this soon wore away. It wasn't long before Olga's offspring and +mine were fraternizing together, over-running the bathroom tub and +emptying our water-tank, and making a concerted attack on one of +Dinky-Dunk's self-binders, which would have been dismantled in short +order, if Percy hadn't gone out to investigate the cause of the sudden +quiet. + +"My boy loves everything with wheels," explained the proud Olga, in +extenuation of her Junior's oil-blackened fingers. + +That brought me up short, for I was on the point of making the same +statement about my Dinkie. After thinking it over, in fact, I realized +that _every_ normal boy loves everything with wheels. And it began to +dawn on me that there was nothing so extraordinary, after all, in my +son's fondness for machinery. I began to see that he was merely one of +a very wide-spread clan, when, an hour later, the entire excited six +united in playing Indian about the haystacks, and kept it up until +even the docile Pauline Augusta was driven to revolt against so +persistently being the Pale-face captive. She announced that she was +tired of being scalped. So, for variety's sake, the boys turned to +riding and roping and hog-tying one another like the true little +westerners they were, and many an imaginary brand was planted on many +a bleating set of ribs. + +But now they are gone, and I've been thinking a great deal about Olga. +I fancy I have even been envying her a little. She's of that annealing +softness which can rivet and hold a family together. I've even been +trying to solace myself with the claim that she's a trifle ox-like in +her make-up. But that is not being just to Olga. She makes a perfect +wife. She is as tranquil-minded as summer moonlight on a convent-roof. +She is as soft-spoken as a wind-harp swinging in an abbey door. She +surrenders to the will of her husband and neither frets nor questions +nor walks with discontent. I suppose she has a will of her own, packed +somewhere away in that benignant big body of hers, but she never +obtrudes it. She placidly awaits her time, as the bosom of the prairie +awaits its harvesting. And I've been wondering if that really isn't +the best type of woman for married life, the autumnally contented and +pensively quiet woman who can remain unruffled by man and his +meanderings. + +I wasn't built according to that plan, and I suppose I've had to pay +for it. I've just about concluded, in fact, that I would have been a +hard nut for any man to crack. I've never been conspicuous for my +efforts at self-obliteration. I've a temper that's as brittle as a +squirrel bone. I'm too febrile and flightly, too chameleon-mooded and +critical. The modern wife should be always a conservative. She should +hold back her husband's impulses of nervous expenditure, conserving +his tranquil-mindedness about the same as cotton-waste in a +journal-box conserves oil. Heaven knows I started with theories +enough--but I must be a good deal like old Schramm, that teacher of +Heine's who was so busy inditing a study of Universal Peace that his +boys had all the chance they could wish for pummeling one another. But +I've been thinking, Reuben. And I'm going to see if I can't save +what's left of the ship. I'm no Renaissance cherub on a cloudlet, but +I'm going to knuckle down and see if I can't jibe along a little +better with my old Dinky-Dunk. I've decided to back off and give him +his chance. If he's set on selling Alabama Ranch, on the terms he's +mentioned, I'm not going to object. He's determined to make money, to +advance. And I don't want to see him accusing me of lying down in the +shafts!... What is more, I'm going out in the fields, when the push is +on, to help stook the wheat. That may wear me down and make me a +little more like Olga. + + + + +_Thursday the Tenth_ + + +It's difficult to be a woman, as the over-sensitive Jean Christophe +once remarked. Men are without those confounding emotions which women +seem to be both cursed with and blessed with. When I announced to +Dinky-Dunk my willingness to part with Alabama Ranch, he took it quite +as a matter of course. He betrayed no tendency to praise me for my +sacrifices, for my willingness to surrender to strangers the land +which had once been our home, the acres on which we'd once been happy +and heavy-hearted. He merely remarked that under the circumstances it +seemed the most sensible thing to do. There's a one-horse lawyer in +Buckhorn who has been asking about the Harris Ranch and Dinky-Dunk +says he suspects this inquiring one has a client up his sleeve. + +What I had looked forward to as a talk which might possibly beat down +a few of the barriers of reserve between us proved a bit of a +disappointment. My husband refused to accept me as a heroine. And on +his way out, as ill-luck would have it, he stopped to observe Pauline +Augusta struggling over a letter to her "Uncle Peter." It was a maiden +effort along that line and she was dictating her messages to Dinkie, +who, in turn, was laboriously and carefully inscribing them on my +writing-pad, with a nose and a sympathetically working tongue not more +than ten inches away from the paper. Pauline Augusta, in fact, had +just proclaimed to her amanuensis that "we had a geese for dinner +to-day" when her father stopped to size up the situation. + +"To whom are you describing the home circle?" questioned Pauline +Augusta's parent, with an intonation that didn't escape me. + +"It's a letter to Uncle Peter," explained Dinkie's little sister. And +I could see Duncan's face harden. + +"It's funny my whole family should fall for that damned Quaker!" were +the words he flung over his shoulder at me as he walked out of the +room. + + + + +_Tuesday the Fifth_ + + +School has started again. And it's a solemn business, this matter of +planting wisdom in little prairie heads. Dinky-Dunk, who has been up +to his ears in haying and is now watching his grain with a nervous +eye, remarked that our offspring would be once more mingling with +Mennonites and Swedes and Galicians and Ukrainians. I resented that +speech, though I said nothing in reply to it. But I decided to +investigate Gershom's school. + +So yesterday afternoon I drove over in the car. I had a blow-out on +the way, a blow-out which I had to patch up with my own hands, so I +arrived too late to inspect Gershom conducting his classes. It was +almost four, in fact, before I got there, so I pulled up beside the +school-gate and sat waiting for the children to come out. And as I sat +there in the car-seat, under a sky of unimaginable blue, with the +prairie wind whipping my face, I couldn't help studying that bald +little temple of learning which stood out so clear-cut in the sharp +northern sunlight. It was a plain little frame building set in one +corner of a rancher's half-section, an acre of land marked off by a +wire fence where the two trails crossed, the two long trails that +melted away in the interminable distance. It seemed a lonely little +house of scholarship, with its playground worn so bare that even two +months of idleness had given scant harborage for the seeds that wind +and bird must have brought there. But as I stared at it it seemed to +take on a dignity all its own, the dignity of a fixed and far-off +purpose. It was the nest of a nation's greatness. It was the outpost +of civilization. It was the advance-guard of pioneering man, driving +the wilderness deeper and deeper into the North. It was life preparing +wistfully for the future. + +From it I heard a sudden shrill chorus of voices and the clatter of +feet, and I knew that the day's work was over. I saw the children +emerge, like bees out of a beehive, and loneliness no longer reigned +over that bald yard in the betraying northern sunlight. Yet they were +not riotous, those children confronting the wine-like air of the open. +They were more subdued than I had looked for, since I could only too +easily remember one of my earlier calls for Dinkie at noon, when I +found the entire class turned out and riding a rancher's pig, a heavy +brood-sow that had in some luckless moment wandered into the +school-yard and had been chased and raced until it was too weary to +resent a young barbarian mounting its broad back and riding thereon, +to the shouts of the other boys and the shrill cries of the girls. But +now, from my car-seat, I could see Gershom surrounded by a +multi-colored group of little figures, as he stopped to fix a +strap-buckle on the school-bag of one of his pupils. And as he stood +there in the slanting afternoon sunlight surrounded by his charges he +suddenly made me think of the tall old priest in Sorolla's _Triste +Herencia_ surrounded by his waifs. I caught the echo of something +benignant and Lincoln-like from that raw-boned figure in the +big-lensed eye-glasses and the clothes that didn't quite fit him. And +my respect for Gershom went up like a Chinook-fanned thermometer. He +took those children of his seriously. He liked them. He was trying to +give them the best that was in him. And that solemn purpose saved him, +redeemed him, ennobled his baldness just as it ennobled the baldness +of the four-square little frame building behind him. I don't know why +it was, but for some reason or other that picture of the northern +prairie and the gaunt school-teacher surrounded by his pupils in the +thinning afternoon sunlight became memorable to me. It photographed +itself on my mind, not sharply, but softened with a fringing prism of +feeling, like a picture taken with what camera-men call a +"soft-focus." It touched my heart, in some way, and threatened to +bring a choke up into my foolish old throat. + +It was Pauline Augusta who saw me first. She came toward the car with +her strapped school-books and her lunch-box in her hand and a prim +little smile on her slightly freckled face. She impressed me as a +startingly shabby figure, in the old sealskin coat which I had made +over for her, worn clean to the hide along the front, for even those +early autumn days found a chill in the air when the sun began to get +low. She had just climbed in beside me when I caught sight of Dinkie. +I saw him come down the school-steps, stuffing something into the +pocket of his reefer-jacket as he came. He looked startlingly tall, +for a boy of his years. He seemed deep in thought. There was, indeed, +an air of remoteness about him which for a moment rather startled me, +an air of belonging, not to me, but to the world into which he was +peering with such ardent young eyes. Then he caught sight of me, and +at the same moment his face both lightened and brightened. He came +toward the car quietly, none the less, and with that slightly sidewise +twist of the body which overtakes him in his occasional moments of +embarrassment, for it was plain that he stood averse to any undue +display of emotion before his playmates. He merely said, "Hello, +Mummy" and smiled awkwardly. But after he had climbed up into the car +and wormed down between Pauline Augusta and me, and after I had tucked +the old bear-robe about them and called out to Gershom that I'd carry +my kiddies home, I could feel Dinkie's arm push shyly in behind my +back and work its way as far around my waist as it was able to reach. +He didn't speak. But his solemn little face gazed up at me, with its +habitual hungry look, and I could see the hazel specks in the brown +iris of the upturned eye as the arm tightened its hold on me. It made +me ridiculously happy. For I knew that my boy loved me. And I love +him. I love him so much that it brings a tapering spear-head of pain +into my heart, and at the very moment I'm so happy I feel a tear just +under the surface. + + + + +_Sunday the Tenth_ + + +I have been reading Peter's latest letter to Dinkie, reading it for +the second time. It is not so frolicsome as many of its fellows, but +it impresses me as typical of its sender. + + "I've to-day told fourteen cents' worth of postage-stamps to carry + out to you, dear Dinkie, a copy of my own _Tales from Homer_, + which may be muddy with a few big words but which the next year or + two will surely see tramped down into easier going. You may not + like it now, but later on, I know, you will like it better. For it + tells of heroes and battles and travels which only a boy can + really understand. It tells of the wanderings and adventures of + strong and simple-hearted men, men who are as scarce, nowadays, as + the shining helmets they used to wear. It tells of women superb + and simple and lovely as goddesses, such as your own prairie might + give birth to, such as your own mother must always seem to us. It + tells of flashing temples and cities of marble overlooking singing + seas of sapphire, of stately ships venturing over dark waters and + landing on unknown islands, of siege and sword-fights and caves + and giants and sea-goddesses and magic songs, and all that + sunnier and simpler life which the world, as a prosaic old + grown-up, has left behind.... + + "But I'm wrong in this, perhaps, for out in the land where you + live there is still largeness and the gold-green ache of wonder + beyond every sky-line. And I can't help envying you, Dinkie, for + being a part of that world which is so much more heroic than mine. + I live where a very shabby line of horse-cars used to run; and you + live where the buffaloes used to run. I hear the rattle of the + ash-cans in the morning; and you hear the song of the wind playing + on the harp of summer. I pay five hundred dollars a year to wander + about a smoky club no bigger than your corral; you wander about a + Big Outdoors that rambles off up to the Arctic Circle itself. And + you open a window at night and see the Aurora Borealis in all its + beauty; and I open mine and observe an electric roof-sign + announcing that Somebody's Tonic will take away my tired feeling. + You put up your blind and see God's footstool bright with dew and + dizzy with distance; I put up mine and overlook a wall of brick + and mortar with one window wherein a fat man shaves himself. And + you can go out in the morning and pick yellow crowfoot and range + lilies; and all we can pick about this place of ours are + milk-bottles and morning-papers packed full of murder and theft + and tax-notices!" + +Much of that letter, I know, was over Dinkie's head. But it carried a +message or two to Dinkie's mother which in some way threw her heart +into high. It was different from the letter that came the week +before, the one arriving two days ahead of Kingsley's _Water Babies_ +with six lines of Hagedorn inscribed on its fly-leaf: + + "And here you are to live, and help us live. + Bend close and listen, bird with folded wings. + Here is life's secret: Keep the upward glance; + Remember Aries is your relative, + The Moon's your uncle, and those twinkling things + Your sisters and your cousins and your aunts!" + +This letter seemed like the Peter Ketley we knew best, the sad-eyed +Peter with the feather of courage in his cap, the Peter who could +caper and make you forget that his heart had ever been heavy. For he +wrote: + + "This time, Dinkie-Boy, I'm going to tell you about the sea. For + the water-tank, as I remember it, is the biggest sea you have at + Casa Grande--unless you count the mud when winter breaks up! And + your prairie, with its long waves of green, is, I suppose, really + a sea that has gone to sleep. But I mean the truly + honest-to-goodness sea which has tides and baby-whales and + steamers and cramps and sea-serpents in it. You saw it once at + Santa Monica, I know, though you may have been too small to + remember. But yesterday, I motored to a place called Atlantic City + where they sell picture post-cards and push you in a wheeled chair + and let you sit on the sand and watch the Water Babies, whom the + policemen send to jail if they so much as walk along the beach + without their stockings on. These Water Babies were not in a + bottle--like the ones you'll read about in the book--but I think + there was a bottle or two in some of them, from the way they + acted. But one of them was in a pickle, for Father Neptune caught + her in his under-tow--which you must not mix up with his + under-toe, something with which only the mermaids are + familiar--and a life-guard had to swim out and bring her in. And a + few minutes after that I saw a real beach-comber. I had read about + them in the South Sea Islands, but had never seen one before. This + one sat under a striped parasol, with a mirror between her knees, + and combed and combed her hair until it was quite dry again. I was + disappointed in her knees, because I was hoping, at first, she + wouldn't have any, but would be a mermaid who had come up on the + sand to sun herself and would have a long and tapering tail + covered with scales like a tarpon's. But all she had was + beach-shoes tied with silk ribbons, and I preferred watching the + water. For when I watch the ocean I always feel like Mr. Hood and + wish I was at least three small boys, so that I could pull off my + three pairs of shoes and stockings and go paddling up to my six + bare knees and let the rollers slap against my three startled + little tummies and have thirty toes to step on the squids and + star-fish with. And when I went back to the board-walk and watched + all the gulls (I don't think I ever saw so many of 'em in one + place at once) I couldn't help thinking it was too bad the Pilgrim + Fathers didn't wait for three centuries and land at a bright and + lively place like this, since it would have made them so much + jollier and fizzier. They'd probably have turned the _Mayflower_ + into a diving-float and we'd never have had any Blue Laws to break + and that curious thing known as The New England Conscience to keep + us from being as happy as we feel we ought to be." + + + + +_Sunday the Twenty-Fourth_ + + +Harvest is on us, and Casa Grande hums like a beehive. There are three +extra "hands" to feed, and Whinnie is going about with a moody eye +because Struthers is directing more attention than necessary toward +one of the smooth-spoken cutthroats now nesting in our bunk-house. His +name is Cuba Sebeck and in times of peace he professes to be a +horse-wrangler. Struthers, intent on showing Whinnie that he is not +the only man in her world, is placidly but patiently showering the +lanky Cuba with a barrage of her fluffiest pastries. She has also +given her hair an extra strong wash of sage-tea, which is Struthers' +pet and particular way of putting on war-paint. Whinnie, I notice, +shuts himself up after supper with that copy of Burns' poems we gave +him last Christmas, morosely exiling himself from all the laughing and +gaming and pow-wowing which takes place in the long cool twilights, +just outside the bunk-house. Cuba undertook to serenade the dour one +by donning certain portions of Struthers' apparel and playing my old +banjo under his window. Whinnie quietly retaliated by emptying his +bath-water on the musician's head--and the language was indescribable. +I have been forced to speak to Dinky-Dunk, in fact, about the men's +profanity before my children. It is something I will not endure. My +husband, on the other hand, refuses to take the matter very seriously. +But I have been keeping a close eye over my kiddies--and woe betide +the horse-wrangler who uses unseemly language within their hearing. So +far they seem to have gone through it unscathed, about the same as a +child can go through the indecorous moments of _The Arabian Nights_, +which stands profoundly wicked to only Arabs and old gentlemen. + + + + +_Wednesday the Twenty-Eighth_ + + +Summer is slipping away. The days are shortening and there have been +light frosts at night, but not enough to hurt Dinky-Dunk's late oats, +which he has been watching with a worried eye. There is a saber-blade +edge to the evening air now and we have been having some glorious +displays of Northern Lights. I can't help feeling that these Merry +Dancers of the Pole, as some one has called them, make up for what the +prairie may lack in diversity. Dusk by dusk they drown our world in +color, they smother our skies in glory. They are terrifying, +sometimes, to the tenderfoot, giving him the feeling that his world is +on fire. Poor old Struthers, during an especially active display, +invariably gets out her Bible. Used to them as I am, I find they can +still touch me with awe. They make me lonesome. They seem like the +search-lights of God, showing up my human littlenesses of soul. They +are Armadas of floating glory reminding me there are seas I can never +traverse. And the farther north one goes, of course, the more +magnificent the displays. + +Last night we watched the auroral bands gather and grow in a cold +green sky, straight to the north of us, and then waver and deepen +until they reached the very zenith, where they hung, swaying curtains +of fire. No wonder the redskins call that wild pageantry of color the +ghost-dance of their gods. Even as we watched them, opal and gold and +rose and orange and green, we could see them come wheeling down on our +little world like an army of angels with incandescent swords. It made +one imagine that the very heavens were aflame, going up in quivering +veils of white and red and green. And when it was over I listened to a +long argument about the Aurora Borealis, or the Aurora Polaris, as +Gershom insisted it should be called. + +Dinky-Dunk contended that one could _hear_ these Northern Lights +overhead, on a clear night. He described the sound as sometimes a +faint crackling, like that of a comb drawn through your hair, and +sometimes as a soft rustling noise, like the rustling of a silk +petticoat heard through a closed door, coming closer and closer as the +display wavered farther and farther toward the south. + +Gershom was disposed to dispute this, so our old Klondiker, Whinstane +Sandy, was called in to give evidence. He did so promptly and +positively, saying he'd heard the Lights many a night in the Far +North. Gershom is still unconvinced, but intends to look up his +authorities on the matter. He attributes them to sun-spots and asserts +it's a well-known fact they often put the telephone and telegraph +wires out of commission. He has proposed that we sit up and study them +some night, through his telescope, which he is disinterring from the +bottom of his trunk.... + +My lord and master is going about with a less clouded eye, for he has +succeeded in selling the Harris Ranch, and selling it for thirty-five +hundred dollars more than he had expected. It is to go, eventually, to +some tenderfoot out of the East, to some tenderfoot who can have very +little definite knowledge of land-values in this jumping-off place on +the edge of the world. But may that tenderfoot, whoever he is, be +happy in his new home! Dinky-Dunk is now forever figuring up what he +will get for his grain. He's preoccupied with his plans for branching +out in the business world. His heart is no longer in his work here. I +sometimes feel that we're all merely accidents in his life. And that +feeling leaves me with a heart so heavy that I have to keep busy, or +I'd fall to luxuriating in that self-pity which is good for neither +man nor beast. + +Yet Dinky-Dunk is not all hardness. He surprises me, now and then, by +disturbing little gestures of boyishness. He announced to me the other +night that the only way to get any use out of a worn-out husband was +to revamp him, with the accent on the vamp. I understood what he +meant, and I think I actually changed color a trifle. But I know of +nothing more desolating than trying to make love to a man either +against his will or against your own will. It would be a terrible +thing to have him tell you there was no longer any kick in your +kisses. So I remain on my dignity. I am companionable, and nothing +more. When we were saying good-by, the last time he went off to the +city, and he looked up at my perfunctory and quite meaningless peck on +his cheek, I felt myself blushing before his quiet and half-quizzical +stare. Then he laughed a little as he turned away and pulled on his +gauntlets. "The sweeter the champagne, I suppose, the colder it should +be served!" he rather cryptically remarked as he climbed into the +waiting car. And yesterday he let his soul emerge from its tent of +reticence when he climbed up on the wagon-box to stare out over his +sea of all but ripened wheat. "Come, money!" he said, with his arms +stretched out before him. Now, that was a trick which he had caught +from my little Dinkie. I don't know how or where the boy first picked +up the habit, but when he particularly wants something he stands +solemnly out in the open, with his two little arms outstretched, as +though he were supplicating Heaven itself, and says "Come, +jack-knife!" or "Come, jelly-roll!" or "Come, rain!" according to his +particular desires of the particular moment. I think he really caught +it from an illustration in _The Arabian Nights_, from the picture of +Cassim grandiloquently proclaiming "Open Sesame!" He is an imaginative +little beggar. "Mummy," he said to me the other night, "see all the +moonlight that's been spilled on the grass!" But children are made +that way. Even my sage little Poppsy, when a marigold-leaf fell in the +bowl of our solitary gold-fish, cried out to me: "See, Mummy, our fish +has had a baby!" Sex is still an enigma to her, as much an enigma as +it was away last spring when, not being quite sure whether her new +kitten was a little boy-cat or a little girl-cat, she sagaciously +christened it "Willie-Alice." And a few weeks later, when the +unmistakable appearance of tail-feathers finally persuaded even her +optimistic young heart that the two chicks which had been bequeathed +to her were dishearteningly masculine in their tendencies, she +officially re-christened the apostate "Elaine" and "Rowena," and +thereafter solemnly accepted them as "Archie" and "Albert." And while +speaking of this mysteriously ramifying factor of sex, I am compelled +to acknowledge that I encountered a rather disturbing little +back-flare of Freudian hell-fire only a couple of evenings ago. It +took my thoughts galloping back to the time in our post-nuptial era +when Dinky-Dunk went Berserker and chased me around the haystacks with +my hair flying. I'd taken Dinkie upon my lap, and, without quite +knowing it, sat stroking his frowsy young head. My thoughts, in fact, +were a thousand miles away. Then, still without giving much attention +to what I was doing, I squeezed that warm little body up close against +my own. I was astounded, the next moment, to see my small offspring +turn on me with all the lusty fierceness of the cave man. He got his +arms about me and buried his face in my neck and kissed me as no +gentleman, big or little, should ever kiss a lady. His small body was +shaken with a subliminal and quite unexpected gust of feeling, just +as I've seen a June-time garden shaken by an unexpected gust of wind. +It passed away, of course, about as quickly as it came--but with it +went a scattering of the white petals of childhood unconcern. + +I don't suppose my poor little Dinkie has yet awakened to the fact +that his body is a worn river-bed down which must race the freshets of +far-off racial instincts. But the thing disturbed me more than I'd be +willing to admit. There are murky corridors in the house of life. They +stand there, and they must be faced. There are rooms where the air +must be kept stirring, corners into which the clear sanity of sunlight +must be thrown. Dinkie, since he has stepped into his first experience +in the keeping of rabbits, has been asking me a number of rather +disconcerting questions. His father, I notice, has the habit of +half-diffidently referring the boy to me, just as I nursed the earlier +habit of referring him to his father. But some time soon Dinkie and I +will have to have a serious talk about this thing called Life, this +Life which is so much more uncompromisingly brutal than the child-mind +can conceive.... + +By the way, there's a lot of nonsense talked about motherhood +softening women. It may soften them in some ways, but there are many +others in which it hardens them. It draws their power of love together +into a fixed point, just as the lens of a burning-glass concentrates +the vague warmth of the sun into one small and fiercely illuminated +area. It is a form of selfishness, I suppose, but it is a selfishness +nature imposes upon us. And it is sanctified by the end it serves. At +every turn, now, I find that I am thinking of my children. I seem to +have my eyes set steadily on something far, far ahead. I'm not quite +certain just what this something is. It's a sort of secret between me +and the Master of Life. But the memory of it makes my days more +endurable. It allows me to face the future without a quaver of regret. +I am a woman, and I am no longer young. But it gives me courage to +laugh in the teeth of Time. + +And to laugh, to laugh whatever happens--that is the great thing! It +isn't age I dread. But I'd hate to lose that lightness with which +those blessed ones we call the young can move through the world, that +self-renewing freshness which converts every daybreak into a dewy new +world and mints every sunrise into a brand new life ... I asked +Gershom to-day if he could possibly tell me how many Parker House +rolls a square mile of wheat running forty bushels to the acre would +make. And he surprised me by inquiring how many quarts of buttermilk +it would take to shingle a cow. Gershom is widening out a bit.... + +Dinkie, I notice, has just compiled a list of horses. I read from his +carefully ruled half-page: + +"Draght horses; carriege horses; riding horses; racing horses; +ponyies; percheron from france; Belgain from Beljium; shire clyesdale +and saffold punch from great Britain; french coach and German coach; +contucky saddle horses; through-breads; Shetland ponies; mushstand +ponies; pacers and pintoes." Thus recordeth my Toddler. + + + + +_Sunday the Ninth_ + + +I have had Dinkie in bed for the last five days, with a bruised foot. +Duncan shortened the stirrups and put the boy on Briquette, who had +just proved a handful for even an old horse-wrangler like Cuba Sebeck. +Briquette bucked and threw the boy. And Dinkie, in the mix-up, got a +hoof-pound on the ankle. No bones were broken, luckily, but the foot +was very sore and swollen for a few days. No word about the episode +has passed between Duncan and me. But I'm glad, all things considered, +that I was not a witness of the accident. The clouds are already quite +heavy enough over Casa Grande. + +Dinkie and his mater, however, have been drawn much closer together +during the last few days. I've talked to him, and read to him, and +without either of us being altogether conscious of it there has been +an opening of a closed door or two. Dinkie loves to be read to. The +new world of the imagination is just opening up to him. And I envy the +rapture of the child in books, rapture not yet spoiled by the +intellectual conceit of the grown-up. + +But I'm not the only reader about this ranch. I'm afraid the copy of +Burns which Santa Claus brought to Whinstane Sandy last Christmas is +not adding to his matrimonial tendencies as love-plaints of that +nature should. At noon, as soon as dinner is over, he sits on the back +step, poring over his beloved Tammas. And at night, now that the +evenings are chillier, he retreats to the bunk-house stove, where he +smokes and reads aloud. His own mother, he tells me, used to say many +of those pieces to him when he was a wee laddie. He both outraged and +angered poor Struthers, last Sunday, by reading _Tam O'Shanter_ aloud +to her. That autumnal vestal proclaimed that it was anything but +suitable literature for an old philanderer who still saw fit to live +alone. It showed, she averred, a shocking lack of respect for +women-folk and should be taken over by the police. + +Struthers even begins to suspect that this much-thumbed volume of +Burns lies at the root of Whinnie's accumulating misanthropy. She has +asked me if I thought a volume of Mrs. Hemans would be of service in +leading the deluded old misogynist back to the light. The matter has +become a more urgent one since Cuba Sebeck suffered a severe bilious +attack and a consequent sea-change in his affections. But I'm afraid +our Whinnie is too old a bird to be trapped by printer's ink. I +notice, in fact, that Struthers is once more spending her evenings in +knitting winter socks. And I have a shadow of a suspicion that they +are for the obdurate one. + +My Dinkie, by the way, has written his first poem, or, rather, his +first two poems. The first one he slipped folded into my sewing-basket +and I found it when I was looking for new buttons for Pauline +Augusta's red sweater. It reads: + + No more we smel the sweet clover, + Floting on the breeze all over. + But now we hear the wild geese calling; + And lissen, tis the grey owl yowling. + +The second one, however, was a more ambitious effort. He worked over +it, propped up in bed, for an hour or two. Then, having looked upon +his work and having seen that it was good, he blushingly passed it +over to me. So I went to the window and read it. + + O blue-bird, happy robbin-- + Who teached those birds to stick theirselves together? + Who teached them how to put their tails on? + Who teached them how to hold tight on the tree tops? + Who gived them all the fetthers on their brest? + Who gived them all the eggs with little birdies in them? + Who teached them how to make the shells so blue? + Who teached them how to com home in the dark? + Twas God. Twas God. He teached him! + +I read it over slowly, with a crazy fluttering of the heart which I +could never explain. They were so trivial, those little halting lines, +and yet so momentous to me! It was life seeking expression, life +groping so mysteriously toward music. It was man emerging out of the +dusk of time. It was Rodin's _Penseur_, not in grim and stately +bronze, but in a soft-eyed and white-bodied child, groping his +stumbling way toward the border-land of consciousness, staring out on +a new world and finding it wonderful. It was my Little Stumbler, my +Precious Piece-of-Life, walking with his arm first linked through the +arm of Mystery. It was my Dinkie looking over the rampart of the +home-nest and breaking lark-like into song. + +I went back to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, and took my +man-child in my arms. + +"It's wonderful, Dinkie," I said, trying to hide the tears I was so +ashamed of. "It's so wonderful, my boy, that I'm going to keep it with +me, always, as long as I live. And some day, when you are a great +man, and all the world is at your feet, I'm going to bring it to you +and show it to you. For I know now that you are going to be a great +man, and that your old mother is going to live to be so proud of you +it'll make her heart ache with joy!" + +He hugged me close, in a little back-wash of rapture, and then settled +down on his pillows. + +"I could do better ones than that," he finally said, with a glowing +eye. + +"Yes," I agreed. "They'll be better and better. And that'll make your +old Mummsy prouder and prouder!" + +He lay silent for several minutes. Then he looked at the square of +paper which I held folded in my hand. + +"I'd like to send it to Uncle Peter," he rather startled me by +saying. + + + + +_Saturday the Twenty-Ninth_ + + +Once more I'm a grass widow. My Duncan is awa'. He scooted for Calgary +as soon as his threshing-work was finished up. But that tumult is over +and once more I've a chance to sit down and commune with my soul. +Everything here is over-running with wheat. Our bins are bursting. The +lord of the realm is secretly delighted, but he has said little about +it. He has a narrow course to steer. He is grateful for the money that +this wheat will bring in to him, yet he can see it would never do to +harp too loudly on the productiveness of our land--on _my_ land, I +ought to say, for Casa Grande has now been formally deeded to me. I +find no sense of triumph, however, in that transfer. I am depressed, +in fact, at the very thought of it. It seems to carry a vague air of +the valedictory. But I refuse to be intimidated by the future. + +Gershom and I, indeed, have been indulging in the study of astronomy. +The air was crystal clear last night, so that solemn youth suggested +that we take out the old telescope and study the stars. Which we did. +And which was much more wonderful than I had imagined. But Gershom had +no reflector, so after getting a neck-ache trying to inspect the +heavens while on our feet we took the old buffalo-robe and a couple of +rugs out to a straw-pile that had been hauled in to protect our winter +perennials. There we indecorously reposed on our backs and went +stargazing in comfort. And Gershom even forgot that painful +bashfulness of his when he fell to talking about the planets. He +slipped out of his shell and spoke with genuine feeling. + +He suggested that we begin with the Big Dipper, which I could locate +easily enough well up in the northern sky. That, Gershom told me, was +sometimes called the Great Bear, though it was only a part of the real +_Ursa Major_ of the astronomers. Then he showed me Benetnasch at the +end of the Dipper's handle, and Mizar at the bend in the handle, then +Alioth, and then Megrez, which joins the handle to the bowl. Then he +showed me Phaed and Merak, which mark the bottom of the bowl, and then +Dubhe at the bowl's outer rim. + +I tried hard, but I was very stupid about getting the names right. +Then Gershom asked me to look up at Mizar, and see if I could make +out a small star quite close to it. I did so, without much trouble, +and Gershom thereupon condescended to admit that I had exceptionally +good eyes. For that star, he explained, was Alcor, and Alcor was +Arabic for "the proof," and for centuries and centuries the ability to +see that star had been accepted as the proof of good vision. + +Then Gershom went on to the other constellations, and talked of suns +of the first and second magnitude, and pointed out Sirius, in whose +honor great temples had once been built in Egypt, and Arcturus, the +same old Arcturus that a Hebrew poet by the name of Job had sung +about, and Vega and Capella and Rigel, which he said sent out eight +thousand times more light than our sun, and is at least thirty-four +thousand times as big. + +But it only made me dizzy and staggered my mind. I couldn't comprehend +the distances he was talking about. I just couldn't make it, any more +than a bronco that had been used to jumping a six-barred gate could +vault over a windmill tower. And I had to tell Gershom that it didn't +do a bit of good informing me that Sirius was comparatively close to +us, as it stood only nine light-years away. I remembered how he had +explained that light travels one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles +a second, and that there are thirty million seconds in a year, so that +a light-year is about five and a half million million of miles. But +when he started to tell me that some of the so-called photographic +stars are thirty-two thousand light-years away from us my imagination +just curled up and died. It didn't mean anything to me. It couldn't. I +tried in vain to project my puny little soul through all that space. +At first it was rather bewildering. Then it grew into something +touched with grandeur. Then it took on an aspect of awfulness. And +from that it grew into a sort of ghastliness, until the machinery of +the mind choked and balked and stopped working altogether, like an +overloaded motor. I had to reach out in the cold air and catch hold of +Gershom's arm. I felt a hunger to cling to something warm and human. + +"We call this world of ours a pretty big world," Gershom was saying. +"But look at Betelgeuse up there, which Michelson has been able to +measure. He has, at least, succeeded in measuring the angle at the eye +that Betelgeuse subtends, so that after estimating its parallax as +given by a heliometer, it's merely a matter of trigonometry to work +out the size of the star. And he estimated Betelgeuse to be two +hundred and sixty million miles in diameter. That means it would take +twenty-seven million of our suns to equal it in bulk. So that this big +world of ours, which takes so many weeks to crawl about on the fastest +ships and the fastest trains, is really a mote of dust, something +smaller than the smallest pin-prick, compared to that far-away sun up +there on the shoulder of Orion!" + +"Stop!" I cried. "You're positively giving me a chill up my spine. +You're making me feel so lonesome, Gershom, that you're giving me +goose-flesh. You're not leaving me anything to get hold of. You +haven't even left me anything to stand on. I'm only a little speck of +Nothing on a nit of a world in a puny little universe which is only a +little freckle on the face of some greater universe which is only a +lost child in a city of bigger constellations which in turn have still +lonelier suns to swing about, until I go on and on, and wonder with a +gasp what is beyond the end of space. But I can't go on thinking about +it. I simply can't. It upsets me, the same as an earthquake would, +when you look about for something solid and find that even your solid +old earth is going back on you!" + +"On the contrary," said Gershom as he put down his telescope, "I know +nothing more conducive to serenity than the study of astronomy. It has +a tendency to teach you, in the first place, just how insignificant +you are in the general scheme of things. The naked eye, in clear air +like this, can see over eight thousand stars. The larger telescopes +reveal a hundred million stars, and the photographic dry-plate has +shown that there are several thousands of millions which can be +definitely recorded. So that you and I are not altogether the whole +works. And to remember that, when we are feeling a bit important, is +good for our Ego!" + +I didn't answer him, for I was busy just then studying the Milky Way. +And I couldn't help feeling that it must have been on a night like +this that a certain young shepherd watching his flocks on the uplands +of Canaan sat studying the infinite stairways of star-dust that +"sloped through darkness up to God" and was moved to say: "When I +consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars +which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, or +the son of man that Thou visitest him?" + +"Yes, Gershom, it's horribly humiliating," I said as I squinted up at +those serene heavens. "They last forever. And we come and go out, and +nobody knows why!" + +"Pardon me," corrected the literal-minded Gershom. "They do not last +forever. They come and go out, just as we do. Only they take longer. +Consider the Dipper up there, for instance. A hundred thousand years +from now that Dipper will be perceptibly altered, for we know the +lateral movement of Dubhe and Benetnasch will give the outer line of +the bowl a greater flare and make the crook of the handle a trifle +sharper. Even a thousand years would show change enough for +instruments to detect. And a million years will probably show the +group pretty well broken up. But the one regrettable feature, of +course, is that we will not be here to see it." + +"Where will we be?" I asked Gershom. + +"I don't know," he finally admitted, after an unexpectedly long +silence. + +"But will it all go on, forever and forever and forever?" + +"To do so is not in the nature of things," was Gershom's quiet-toned +reply. "It is the destiny of our own earth, of course, which most +interests us. And however we look at it, that destiny is a gloomy +one. Its heat may fail. Stupart, in fact, has established that its +temperature is going down one and a half degrees every thousand years. +Or its volcanic elevating forces may give out, so that the land will +subside and the water wash over it from pole to pole. Or a comet may +wipe up its atmosphere, the same as one sponge-sweep wipes up moisture +from a slate. Or the sun itself may cool, so that the last of our race +will stand huddled together in a solarium somewhere on the Equator. Or +as our sun rushes toward Lyra, it may bump into a derelict sun, just +as a ship bumps into a wreck. If that derelict were as big as our sun, +astronomers would see it at least fifteen years before the collision. +For five or six years it would even be visible to the naked eye, so +that the race, or what remained of the race, would have plenty of time +to think things over and put its house in order. Then, of course, we'd +go up like a singed feather. And there'd be no more breakfasts to +worry over, and no more wheat to thresh, and no more school fires to +start in the morning, and no more children to make think you know more +than you really do, and not even any more hearts to ache. There would +be just Emptiness, just voiceless and never-ending Nothingness!" + +Gershom stopped speaking and sat staring up at Orion. Then he turned +and looked at me. + +"What's the matter?" he asked, for he must have felt my shiver under +the robe. + +"Nothing," I said in a thin and pallid voice. "Only I think I'll go +back to the house. And I'm going to make a pot of good hot cocoa!" ... +And that's mostly what life is: making little pots of cocoa to keep +our bodies warm in the midst of a never-ending chilliness! + + + + +_Tuesday the Eighth_ + + +My husband is home again. He came back with the first blizzard of the +winter and had a hard time getting through to Casa Grande. This gives +him all the excuses he could desire for railing at prairie life. I +told him, after patiently listening to him cussing about everything in +sight, that it was plain to see that he belonged to the land of the +beaver. He promptly requested to know what I meant by that. + +"Doesn't the beaver regard it as necessary to dam his home before he +considers it fit to live in?" I retorted. But Duncan, in that +estranging new mood of his, didn't relax a line. He even announced, a +little later on, that a quick-silver wit might be all right if it +could be kept from running over. And it was my turn to ask if he had +any particular reference to allusions. + +"Well, for one thing," he told me, "there's this tiresome habit of +hitching nicknames on to everything in sight." + +I asked him what names he objected to. + +"To begin right at home," he retorted, "I regard 'Dinkie' as an +especially silly name for a big hulk of a boy. I think it's about time +that youngster was called by his proper name." + +I'd never thought about it, to tell the truth. His real name, I +remembered, was Elmer Duncan McKail. That endearing diminutive of +"Dinkie" had stuck to him from his baby days, and in my fond and +foolish eyes, of course, had always seemed to fit him. But even +Gershom had spoken to me on the matter, months before, asking me if I +preferred the boy to be known as "Dinkie" to his school mates. And I'd +told Gershom that I didn't believe we could get rid of the "Dinkie" if +we wanted to. His father, I knew, had once objected to "Duncan," as he +had no liking to be dubbed "Old Duncan" while his offspring would +answer to "Young Duncan." And "Duncan," as a name, had never greatly +appealed to me. But it is plain now that I have been remiss in the +matter. So hereafter we'll have to make an effort to have our little +Dinkie known as Elmer. It's like bringing a new child into the family +circle, a new child we're not quite acquainted with. But these things, +I suppose, have to be faced. So hereafter my laddie shall officially +be known as "Elmer," Elmer Duncan McKail. And I have started the ball +rolling by duly inscribing in his new books "Elmer D. McKail" and +requesting Gershom to address his pupil as "Elmer." + +I've been wondering, in the meantime, if Duncan is going to insist on +a revision of all our ranch names, the names so tangled up with love +and good-natured laughter and memories of the past. Take our horses +alone: Tumble-weed and timeless Tithonus, Buntie and Briquette, +Laughing-gas and Coco the Third, Mudski and Tarzanette. I'd hate now +to lose those names. They are the register of our friendly love for +our animals. + +It begins to creep through this thick head of mine that my husband no +longer nurses any real love for either these animals or prairie life. +And if that is the case, he will never get anything out of prairie +living. It will be useless for him even to try. So I may as well do +what I can to reconcile myself to the inevitable. I am not without my +moments of revolt. But in those moods when I feel a bit uppish I +remember about my recent venture into astronomy. What's the use of +worrying, anyway? There was one ice age, and there is going to be +another ice age. I tell myself that my troubles are pretty trivial, +after all, since I'm only one of many millions on this earth and +since this earth is only one of many millions of other earths which +will swing about their suns billions and billions of years after I and +my children and my children's children are withered into dust. + +It rather takes my breath away, at times, and I shy away from it the +same as Pauline Augusta shies away from the sight of blood. It reminds +me of Chaddie's New York lady with whom the Bishop ventured to discuss +ultimate destinies. "Yes, I suppose I shall enter into eternal bliss," +responded this fair lady, "but would you mind not discussing such +disagreeable subjects at tea-time?" + +Speaking of disagreeable subjects, we seem to have a new little +trouble-maker here at Casa Grande. It's in the form of a brindle pup +called Minty, which Dinkie--I mean, of course, which Elmer, acquired +in exchange for a jack-knife and what was left of his _Swiss Family +Robinson_. But Minty has not been well treated by the world, and was +brought home with a broken leg. So Whinnie and I made splints out of +an old cigar-box cover, and padded the fracture with cotton wool and +bound it up with tape. Minty, in the moderated spirits of invalidism, +was a meek and well behaved pup during the first few days after his +arrival, sleeping quietly at the foot of Elmer's bed and stumping +around after his new master like a war veteran awaiting his discharge. +But now that Minty's leg is getting better and he finds himself in a +world that flows with warm milk and much petting, he betrays a +tendency to use any odd article of wearing apparel as a teething-ring. +He has completely ruined one of my bedroom slippers and done +Mexican-drawn-work on the ends of the two living-room window-curtains. +But what is much more ominous, Minty yesterday got hold of +Dinky-Dunk's Stetson and made one side of its rim look as though it +had been put through a meat-chopper. So my lord and master has been +making inquiries about Minty and Minty's right of possession. And the +order has gone forth that hereafter no canines are to sleep in this +house. It impresses me as a trifle unreasonable, all things +considered, and Elmer, with a rather unsteady underlip, has asked me +if Minty must be taken away from him. But I have no intention of +countermanding Duncan's order. The crust over the volcano is quite +thin enough, as it is. And whatever happens, I am resolved to be a +meek and dutiful wife. But I've had a talk with Whinnie and he's going +to fix up a comfortable box behind the stove in the bunk-house, and +there the exiled Minty will soon learn to repose in peace. It's +marvelous, though, how that little three-legged animal loves my +Dinkie, loves my Elmer, I should say. He licks my laddie's shoes and +yelps with joy at the smell of his pillow ... Poor little +abundant-hearted mite, overflowing with love! But life, I suppose, +will see to it that he is brought to reason. We must learn not to be +too happy on this earth. And we must learn that love isn't always +given all it asks for. + + + + +_Thursday the Seventeenth_ + + +The crust over the volcano has shown itself to be even thinner than I +imagined. The lava-shell gave way, under our very feet, and I've had a +glimpse of the molten fury that can flow about us without our knowing +it. And like so many of life's tragic moments, it began out of +something that is almost ridiculous in its triviality. + +Night before last, when Struthers was rather late in setting her +bread, she heard Minty scratching and whimpering at the back door, and +without giving much thought to what she was doing, let him into the +house. Minty, of course, went scampering up to Dinkie's bed, where he +slept secretly and joyously until morning. And all might have been +well, even at this, had not Minty's return to his kingdom gone to his +head. To find some fitting way of expressing his joy must have taxed +that brindle pup's ingenuity, for, before any of us were up, he +descended to the living-room, where he delightedly and diligently +proceeded to remove the upholstery from the old Chesterfield. By the +time I came on the scene, at any rate, there was nothing but a grisly +skeleton of the Chesterfield left. Now, that particular piece of +furniture had known hard use, and there were places where the mohair +had been worn through, and I'd even discussed the expediency of having +the thing done over. But I knew that Minty's efforts to hasten this +movement would not meet with approval. So I discreetly decided to have +Whinnie and Struthers remove the tell-tale skeleton to the bunk-house. +Before that transfer could be effected, however, the Dour Man invaded +the living-room and stood with a cold and accusatory eye inspecting +that monument of destructiveness. + +"Where's Elmer?" he demanded, with a grim look which started by heart +pounding. + +"Elmer's dressing," I said as quietly as I could. "Do you want him?" + +"I do," announced my husband, whiter in the face than I had seen him +for many a day. + +"What for?" I asked. + +"I think you know what for," he said, meeting my eye. + +"I'm not sure that I do," I found the courage to retort. "But I'd +prefer being certain." + +Duncan, instead of answering me, went to the foot of the stairs and +called his son. Then he strode out of the room and out of the house. +Struthers, in the meantime, circumspectly took possession of Minty, +who was still indecorously shaking a bit of mohair between his jocund +young teeth. She and Minty vanished from the scene. A moment later, +however, Duncan walked back into the room. He had a riding-quirt in +his hand. + +"Where's that boy?" he demanded. + +I went out to the foot of the stairs, where I met Elmer coming down, +buttoning his waist as he came. For just a moment his eye met mine. It +was a questioning eye, but not a cowardly one. I had intended to speak +to him, but my voice, for some reason, didn't respond to my will. So I +merely took the boy's hand and led him into the living-room. There his +father stood confronting him. + +"Did that pup sleep on your bed last night?" demanded the man with the +quirt. + +"Yes," said the child, after a moment of silence. + +"Did you hear me say that no dog was to sleep in this house?" demanded +the child's father. + +"Yes," said Elmer, with his own face as white as his father's. + +"Then I think that's about enough," asserted Duncan, turning a +challenging eye in my direction. + +"What are you going to do?" I asked. My voice was shaking, in spite of +myself. + +"I'm going to whale that youngster within an inch of his life," said +the master of the house, with a deadly sort of intentness. + +"I don't want you to do that," I quavered, wondering why my words, +even as I uttered them, should seem so inadequate. + +"Of course you don't," mocked my husband. "But this is the limit. And +what you want isn't going to count!" + +"I don't want you to do that," I repeated. Something in my voice, I +suppose, must have arrested him, for he stood there, staring at me, +with a little knot coming and going on one side of his skull, just in +front of his upper ear-tip. + +"And why not?" he asked, still with that hateful rough ironic note in +his voice. + +"Because you don't know what you're punishing this child for," I told +him with all the quietness I could command. "And because you're in no +fit condition to do it." + +"You needn't worry about my condition," he cried out--and I could see +by the way he said it that he was still blind with rage. "Come here, +you!" he called to Dinkie. + +It was then that the fatal little bell clanged somewhere at the back +of my head, the bell that rings down the curtain on all the slowly +accumulated civilization the centuries may have brought to us. I not +only faced my husband with a snort of scorn, but I tightened my grip +on the child's hand. I tightened my grip on his hand and backed slowly +and deliberately away until I came to the door of my sewing-room. +Then, still facing my husband, I opened that door and said: "Go +inside, Dinkie." I could not see the boy, but I knew that he had done +as I told him. So I promptly slammed the door shut and stood there +facing the gray-lipped man with the riding-quirt in his hand. He took +two slow steps toward me. His chin was thrust out in a way that made +me think of a fighting-cock's beak. He had not shaved that morning, +and his squared jaw looked stubbled and blue and ugly. + +"You can't pull that petticoat stuff this time," he said in a hard and +throaty tone which I had never heard from him before. "Get out of my +way!" + +"You will not beat that child!" And I myself couldn't have made a +very pretty picture as I flung that challenge up in his teeth. + +"Get out of my way," he repeated. He did not shout it. He said it +almost quietly. But I knew, even before he reached out a shaking hand +to thrust me aside, that he was in deadly earnest, that nothing I +could say would hold him back or turn him aside. And it was then that +my eye fell on the big Colt in its stained leather holster, hanging up +high over one corner of the book-cabinet, where it had been put beyond +the reach of the children. + +I have no memory of giving any thought to the matter. My reaction must +have been both immediate and automatic. I don't think I even intended +to bunt my husband in the short-ribs the way I did, for the impact of +my body half twisted him about and sent him staggering back several +steps. All I know is that holster and belt came tumbling down as I +sprang and caught at the Colt handle. And I was back at the door +before I had even shaken the revolver free. I was back just in time to +hear my husband say, rather foolishly, for the third time: "Get out of +my way!" + +"You stay back there!" I called, quite as foolishly, for by this time +I had the Colt balanced in my hand and was pointing it directly at his +body. + +He stopped short, with a vacuous look in his eyes. + +"_You fool!_" he said, in a sort of strangled whisper. But it was my +face, and not the weapon, that he was staring at all the while. + +"Stay back!" I said again, with my eyes fixed on his. + +He hesitated, for a moment, and made a sound that was like the short +bark of a laugh. It was too hard and horrible, though, ever to be +taken for laughter. And I knew that he was not going to do what I had +said. + +"Stay back!" I warned him still again. But he stepped forward, with a +grim sort of deliberation, with his challenging gaze locked on mine. I +could hear a thousand warning voices, somewhere at the back of my +brain, and at the same time I could hear a thousand singing devils in +my blood trying to drown out those voices. I could see my husband's +narrowed eyes slowly widen, slowly open like the gills of a dying +fish, for the hate that he must have seen on my face obviously +arrested him. It arrested him, but it arrested him only for a moment. +He dropped his eyes to the Colt in my hand. Then he moved deliberately +forward until his body was almost against the barrel-end. I must have +known what it meant, just as he must have known what it meant. It was +his final challenge. And I must have met that challenge. For, without +quite knowing it, I shut my eyes and pulled the trigger. + +There had been something awful, I know, in that momentary silence. And +there was something awful in the sound that came after it, though it +was not the sound my subconscious mind was waiting for. It was +distinct enough and significant enough, heaven knows. But instead of +the explosion of a shell it was the sharp snap of steel against +steel. + +The revolver was empty. It was empty-had been empty for weeks. But the +significant fact remained that I had deliberately pulled the trigger. +I had stood ready, in my moment of madness, to kill the man that I +lived with.... + +Had a ball of lead gone through that man's body, I don't think he +could have staggered back with a more startled expression on his face. +He looked more than bewildered; he looked vaguely humiliated, oddly +and wordlessly affronted, as he stood leaning against the table-edge, +breathing hard, his skin a mottled blue-white to the very lips. He +made an effort to speak, but no sound came from him. For a moment the +dreadful thought raced through me that I had indeed shot him, that in +some mysterious way he was mortally hurt, without this particular +bullet announcing itself as bullets usually do. I looked at the +revolver, stupidly. It seemed to have grown heavy, as heavy as a +cook-stove in my hand. + +"You'd do that?" whispered my husband, very slowly, with a stricken +light in his eyes which I couldn't quite understand. I intended to put +the Colt on the table. But something must have been wrong with my +vision, for the loathsome thing fell loathsomely to the floor. I felt +sick and shaken and a horrible misty feeling of homelessness settled +down about me, of a sudden, for I remembered how closely I had skirted +the black gulf of murder. + +"Oh, Dinky-Dunk!" I blubbered, weakly, as I groped toward him. He must +have thought that I was going to fall, for he put out his arm and held +me up. He held me up, but there wasn't an atom of warmth in his +embrace. He held me up about the same as he'd hold up an open +wheat-sack that threatened to tumble over on his granary floor. I +don't know what reaction it was that took my strength away from me, +but I clung to his shoulders and sobbed there. I felt as alone in the +gray wastes of time as one of Gershom's lost stars. And I knew that +my Dinky-Dunk would never bend down now and whisper into my ear any +word of comfort, any word of forgiveness. For, however things may have +been at the first, I was the one who was now so hopelessly in the +wrong, _I_ was the big offender. And that knowledge only added to my +misery as I stood there clinging to my husband's shoulders and +blubbering "Oh, Dinky-Dunk!" + +It must have grown distasteful to him, my foolish hanging on to him as +though he were a hitching-post, for he finally said in a remote voice: +"I guess we've had about enough of this." He led me rather +ceremoniously to a chair, and slowly let me down in it. Then he +crossed over to the old leather holster and picked it up, and stooped +for the revolver, and pushed it down in the holster and buckled the +cover-flap and tossed the whole thing up to the top of the +book-cabinet again. Then, without speaking to me, he walked slowly out +of the room. + +I was tempted to call him back, but I knew, on second thought, that it +would be no use. I merely sat there, staring ahead of me. Then I shut +my eyes and tried to think. I don't know why, but I was thinking about +the bigness of Betelgeuse, which was twenty-seven million times as big +as our sun and which was going on through its millions of miles of +space without knowing anything about Chaddie McKail and what had +happened to her that morning. I was wondering if there were worlds +between me and Betelgeuse with women on them, with women as alone as I +was, when I felt a pair of small arms tighten about my knees and an +adoring small voice whispered "Mummsy!" And I forgot about Betelgeuse. +For it was my Dinkie there, with his little rough hand reaching +hungrily for mine.... + +Minty has been removed from Casa Grande. I took him over to the +Teetzel ranch in the car, and young Dode Teetzel is to get a dollar a +week for looking after him and feeding him. Only Elmer and I know of +his whereabouts. And once a week the boy can canter over on Buntie and +keep in touch with his pup. + +We have a tacit understanding that the occurrences of yesterday +morning are a closed chapter, are not to be referred to by word or +deed. Duncan himself found it necessary to team in to Buckhorn and +left word with Struthers that he would stay in town over night. The +call for the Buckhorn trip was, of course, a polite fabrication, an +expedient _pax in bello_ to permit the dust of battle to settle a +little about this troubled house of McKail. All day to-day I have +felt rather languid. I suppose it's the lethargy which naturally +follows after all violence. Any respectable woman, I used to think, +could keep a dead-line in her soul, beyond which the impulses of evil +dare not venture. But I must have been wrong.... All week I've been +looking for a letter from Peter Ketley. But for once in his life he +seems to have forgotten us. + + + + +_Sunday the Twentieth_ + + +I've been wondering to-day just what I'd do if I had to earn my own +living. I could run a ranch, I suppose, if I still had one, but two or +three years of such work would see me a hatchet-faced old termagant +with fallen arches and a prairie-squint. Or I could raise chickens and +peddle dated eggs in a flivver-and fresco hen-coops with whitewash +until the trap-nest of time swallowed me up in oblivion. Or I could +take a rural school somewhere and teach the three R's to little +Slovenes and Frisians and French-Canadians even more urgently in need +of soap and water. Or perhaps I could be housekeeper for one of our +new beef-kings in his new Queen-Anne Norman-Georgian Venetian palace +of Alberta sandstone with tesselated towers and bungalow +sleeping-porches. Or I might even peddle magazines, or start a little +bakery in one of the little board-fronted shops of Buckhorn, or take +in plain sewing and dispose of home-made preserves to the elite of the +community. + +But each and all of them would be mere gestures of defeat. I'm of no +value to the world. There was a time when I regarded myself as quite a +Somebody, and prided myself on having an idea or two. Didn't Percy +even once denominate me as "a window-dresser"? There was a time when I +didn't have to wait to see if the pearl-handled knife was the one +intended for the fish-course, and I could walk across a waxed floor +without breaking my neck and do a bit of shopping in the Rue de la +Paix without being taken for a tourist. But that was a long, long time +ago. And life during the last few years has both humbled me and taught +me my limitations. I'm a house-wife, now, and nothing more--and not +even a successful house-wife. I've let everything fall away except the +thought of my home and my family. And now I find that the basket into +which I so carefully packed all my eggs hasn't even a bottom to it. + +But I've no intention of repining. Heaven knows I've never wanted to +sit on the Mourner's Bench. I've never tried to pull a sour mug, as +Dinky-Dunk once inelegantly expressed it. I love life and the joy of +life, and I want all of it I can get. I believe in laughter, and I've +a weakness for men and women who can sing as they work. But I've +blundered into a black frost, and even though there was something to +sing about, there's scarcely a blue-bird left to do the singing. But +sometime, somewhere, there'll be an end to that silence. The blight +will pass, and I'll break out again. I know it. I don't intend to be +held down. I _can't_ be held down. I haven't the remotest idea of how +it's going to happen, but I'm going to love life again, and be happy, +and carol out like a meadow-lark on a blue and breezy April morning. +It may not come to-morrow, and it may not come the next day. But it's +going to come. And knowing it's going to come, I can afford to sit +tight, and abide my time.... + +I've just had a letter from Uncle Chandler, enclosing snap-shots of +the place he's bought in New Jersey. It looks very palatial and +settled and Old-Worldish, shaded and shadowed with trees and softened +with herbage, dignified by the hand of time. It reminds me how many +and many a long year will have to go by before our bald young prairie +can be tamed and petted into a homeyness like that. Uncle Chandler has +rather startled me by suggesting that we send Elmer through to him, to +go to school in the East. He says the boy can attend Montclair +Academy, that he can be taken there and called for every day by +faithful old Fisher, in the cabriolet, and that on Sunday he can be +toted regularly to St. Luke's Episcopal Church, and occasionally go +into New York for some of the better concerts, and even have a +governess of his own, if he'd care for it. And in case I should be +worrying about his welfare Uncle Chandler would send me a weekly +night-letter "describing the condition and the activities of the +child," as the letter expresses it. It sounds very appealing, but +every time I try to think it over my heart goes down like a dab-chick. +My Dinkie is such a little fellow. And he's my first-born, my +man-child, and he means so much in my life. Yet he and his father are +not getting along very well together. It would be better, in many +respects, if the boy could get away for a while, until the raw edges +healed over again. It would be better for both of them. But there's +one thing that would happen: he would grow away from his mother. He'd +come back to me a stranger. He'd come back a little ashamed of his +shabby prairie mater, with her ten-years-old style of hair-dressing +and her moss-grown ideas of things and her bald-looking prairie home +with no repose and no dignifying background and neither a private gym +nor a butler to wheel in the cinnamon-toast. He'd be having all those +things, under Uncle Chandler's roof: he'd get used to them and he'd +expect them. + +But there's one thing he wouldn't and couldn't have. He wouldn't have +his mother. And no one can take a mother's place, with a boy like +that. No one could understand him, and make allowances for him, and +explain things to him, as his own mother could. I've been thinking +about that, all afternoon as I ironed his waists and his blue +flannellet pajamas with frogs on like his dad's. And I've been +thinking of it all evening as I patched his brown corduroy knickers +and darned his little stockings and balled them up in a neat little +row. I tried to picture myself as packing them away in a trunk, and +putting in beside them all the clothes he would need, and the books +that he could never get along without, and the childish little +treasures he'd have to carry away to his new home. But it was too much +for me. There was one thing, I began to see, which could never, never +happen. I could never willingly be parted from my Dinkie. I could +think of nothing to pay me up for losing him. And he needed me as I +needed him. For good or bad, we'd have to stick together. Mother and +son, together in some way we'd have to sink or swim! + + + + +_Wednesday the Thirtieth_ + + +The tension has been relieved by Dinky-Dunk going off to Calgary. +Along with him he has taken a rather formidable amount of his personal +belongings. But he explains this by stating that business will keep +him in the city for at least six or seven weeks. He has been talking a +good deal about the Barcona coal-mine of late, and the last night he +was with us he talked to Gershom for an hour and more about the +advantages of those newer mines over the Drumheller. The newer field +has a solid slate roof which makes drifting safe and easy, a finer +type of coal, and a chance for big money once the railway runs in its +spur and the officials wake up to the importance of giving them the +cars they need. The whole country, Dinky-Dunk claims, is underlaid +with coal, and our province alone is estimated to contain almost +seventeen per cent. of the world's known supply. And my lord and +master expressed the intention of being in on the clean-up. + +I don't know how much of this was intended for my ears. But it served +to disquiet me, for reasons I couldn't quite discern. And the same +vague depression crept over me when Dinky-Dunk took his departure. I +kept up my air of blitheness, it is true, to the last moment, and was +as casual as you please in helping Duncan to pack and reminding him to +put his shaving-things in his bag and making sure the last button was +on his pajamas. I kissed him good-by, as a dutiful wife ought, and +held Pauline Augusta up in the doorway so that she might attempt a +last-minute hand-waving at her daddy. + +But I slumped, once it was all over. I felt mysteriously alone in an +indifferent big world with the rime of winter creeping along its +edges. Even Gershom, after the children had had their lesson, became +conscious of my preoccupation and went so far as to ask if I wasn't +feeling well. + +I smilingly assured him that there was nothing much wrong with me. + +"_Lerne zu leiden ohne zu klagen!_" as the dying Frederick said to a +singularly foolish son. + +"But you're upset?" persisted Gershom, with his valorous brand of +timidity that so often reminds me of a robin defending her eggs. + +"No, it's not that," I said with a shake of the head. "It's only that +I'm--I'm a trifle too chilly to be comfortable." + +And the foolish youth, at that, straightway fell to stoking the fire. +I had to laugh a little. And that made him study me with solemn eyes. + +"Just think, Gershom," I said as I gathered up my sewing, "my heart is +perishing of cold in a province which is estimated to contain almost +seventeen per cent. of the world's known coal supply!" + +And that, apparently, left him with something to think about as I made +my way off to bed ... It's hard to write coherently, I find, when +you're not living coherently ... + +Syd Woodward, of Buckhorn, having learned that I can drive a tractor, +has asked me if I'll take part in the plowing-match to-morrow. And +I've given my promise to show Mere Man what a woman can do in the +matter of turning a mile-long furrow. I feel rather audacious over it +all. And I'm glad to inject a little excitement into life ... I'm +saving up for a new sewing-machine ... Tarzanette has got rather badly +cut up in some of our barb-wire fencing. + + + + +_Friday the Fifteenth_ + + +The plowing-match was good fun, and I enjoyed it even more than I had +expected. The men "kidded" me a good deal, and gave me a cheer at the +end (I don't quite know whether it was for my work or my costume) and +I had to pose for photographs, and a moving-picture man even followed +me about for a round, shooting me as I turned my prairie stubble +upside down. But the excitement of the plowing-match has been eclipsed +by a bit of news which has rather taken my breath away. _It is Peter +Ketley who has bought the Harris Ranch._ + + + + +_Saturday the Twenty-Third_ + + +The rains have brought mushrooms, slathers of mushrooms, and I joy in +gathering them. + +Yesterday afternoon I rode past the Harris Ranch. The old place +brought back a confusion of memories. But I was most disturbed by the +signs of building going on there. It seems to mean a new shack on +Alabama Ranch. And a new shack of very considerable dimensions. I've +been wondering what this implies. I don't know whether to be elated or +depressed. And what business is it, after all, of mine? + +My Dinkie--I have altogether given up trying to call my Dinkie +anything but Dinkie--came home two evenings ago with a discolored eye +and a distinct air of silence. Gershom, too, seemed equally reticent. +So I set about discreetly third-degreeing Poppsy, who finally +acknowledged, with awe in her voice, that Dinkie had been in a fight. + +It was, according to my petticoated Herodotus, a truly terrible fight. +Noses got bloodied, and no one could make the fighters stop. But +Dinkie was unquestionably the conqueror. Yet, oddly enough, I am +informed that he cried all through the combat. He was a crying +fighter. And he had his fight with Climmie O'Lone--trust the Irish to +look for trouble!--who seems to have been accepted as the ring-master +of his younger clan. Their differences arose out of the accusation +that Dinkie, my bashful little Dinkie, had been forcing his unwelcomed +attention on one Doreen O'Lone, Climmie's younger sister. That's +absurd, of course. And Dinkie must have realized it. He didn't want to +fight, acknowledged Poppsy, from the first. He even cried over it. And +Doreen also cried. And Poppsy herself joined in. + +I fancy it was a truly Homeric struggle, for it seems to have lasted +for round after round. It lasted, I have been able to gather, until +Climmie was worsted and down on his back crying "Enough!" Which Poppsy +reports Dinkie made him say three times, until Doreen nodded and said +she'd heard. But my young son, apparently, is one of those crying +fighters, who are reckoned, if I remember right, as the worst breed of +belligerents! + +I have decided not to tell Dinkie what I know. But I'm rather anxious +to get a glimpse of this young Mistress Doreen, for whom lances are +already being shattered in the lists of youth. The O'Lones regard +themselves as the landed aristocracy of the Elk-trail District. And +Doreen O'Lone impresses me as a very musical appellative. Yet I prefer +to keep my kin free from all entangling alliances, even though they +have to do with a cattle-king's offspring.... + +I had a short letter from Dinky-Dunk to-day, asking me to send on a +package of papers which he had left in a pigeon-hole of his desk here. +It was a depressingly non-committal little note, without a glimmer of +warmth between the lines. I'm afraid there's a certain ugly truth +which will have to be faced some day. But I intend to stick to the +ship as long as the ship can keep afloat. I am so essentially a family +woman that I can't conceive of life without its home circle. Home, +however, is where the heart is. And it seems to take more than one +heart to keep it going. I keep reminding myself that I have my +children at the same time that I keep asking myself why my children +are not enough, why they can't seem to fill my cup of contentment as +they ought. Now that their father is so much away, a great deal of +their training is falling on my shoulders. And I must, in some way, be +a model to them. So I'll continue to show them what a Penelope I can +be. Perhaps, after all, they will prove our salvation. For our +offspring ought to be the snow-fences along the wind-harried rails of +matrimony. They should prevent drifting along the line, and from +terminal to lonely terminal should keep traffic open ... I have +to-night induced Poppsy to write a long and affectionate letter to her +_pater_, telling him all the news of Casa Grande. Perhaps it will +awaken a little pang in the breast of her absent parent. + + + + +_Monday the Twenty-Fifth_ + + +I have aroused the ire of the Dour Man. He has sent me a message +strongly disapproving of my conduct. He even claims that I've +humiliated him. I never dreamed, when that movie-man with the camera +followed me about at the plowing-match, that my husband would wander +into a Calgary picture-house and behold his wife in driving gauntlets +and Stetson mounted on a tractor and twiddling her fingers at the +camera-operator, just to show how much at home she felt! Dinky-Dunk +must have experienced a distinctly new thrill when he saw his own wife +come riding through that pictorial news weekly. He would have +preferred not recognizing me, I suppose. But there I was, duly named +and labeled--and hence the ponderous little note of disapproval. + +But I'm not going to let Duncan start a quarrel over trivialities like +this. I intend to sit tight. There'd be little use in argument, +anyway, for Duncan would only ignore me as the predatory tom-cat +ignores the foolishly scolding robin. I'm going to be a regular +mallard, and stick to these home regions until the ice forms. And our +most mountainous troubles, after all, can't quite survive being +exteriorated through the ink-well. It relieves me to write about them. +But I wish I had a woman of my own age to talk to. I get a bit lonely, +now that winter is slipping down out of the North again. And I find +that I'm not so companionable as I ought to be. It comes home to me, +now and then, how far away from the world we are, how remote from +everything that counts. The tragedy of life with Chaddie McKail, I +suppose, is that she's let existence narrow down to just one thing, to +her family. Other women seem to have substitutes. But I've about +forgotten how to be a social animal. I seem to grow as segregative as +the timber-wolf. There's nothing for me in the woman's club life one +gets out here. I can't force myself into church work, and the rural +reading-club is something beyond me. I simply couldn't endure those +Women's Institute meetings which open with a hymn and end up with +sponge-cake and green tea, after a platitudinous paper on the Beauty +of Prairie Life. It has its beauties, God knows, or we'd all go mad. +We women, in this brand-new land, try to bolster ourselves up with the +belief that we have greatnesses which the rest of the world must get +along without. But that is only the flaunting of _La Panache_, the +feather of courage in our cap of discouragement. There is so much, so +much, we are denied! So much we must do without! So much we must see +go to others! So much we must never even hope for! Oh, pioneers, great +you are and great you must be, to endure what you have endured! You +must be strong in your hours of secret questioning and you must be +strong in your quest for consolation. If nothing else, you must at +least be strong. And these western men of ours should all be strong +men, should all be great men, because they must have been the children +of great mothers. A prairie mother _has_ to be a great woman. She must +be great to survive, to endure, to leave her progeny behind her. I've +heard the Wise Men talk about nature looking after her own. I've heard +sentimentalists sing about the strength that lies in the soil. But, +oh, pioneers, you know what you know! In your secret heart of hearts +you remember the lonely hours, the lonely years, the lonely graves! +For in the matter of infant mortality alone, prairie life shows a +record shocking to read. We are making that better, it is true, with +our district nursing and our motherhood clubs and our rural phones +and our organized letting in of light and passing on of knowledge. We +are not so overburdened as those nobler women who went before us. But, +oh, pioneers along these lonely northern trails, I salute you and +honor you for your courage! Your greatness will never be known. It +will be seen only in the great country which you gave up your lives to +bring to birth! + + + + +_Wednesday the Twenty-Seventh_ + + +What weather-cocks we are! My blue Monday is over and done with, this +is a crystalline winter day with all the earth at peace with itself, +and I've just had a letter from Peter asking if I could take care of +his sister's girl, Susie Mumford, until after Christmas. The Mumfords, +it seems, are going through the divorce-mill, and Susie's mother is +anxious that her one and only child should be afar from the scene when +the grist of liberty is a-grinding. + +I know nothing of Susie except what Peter has told me, that she is not +yet nineteen, that she is intelligent, but obstreperous, and much +wiser than she pretends to be, that the machinery of life has always +run much too smoothly about her for her own good, and that a couple of +months of prairie life might be the means of introducing her to her +own soul. + +That's all I know of Susie, but I shall welcome her to Casa Grande. +I'll be glad to see a city girl again, to talk over face-creams and +the _Follies_ and Tchaikowsky and brassieres and Strindberg with. And +I'll be glad to do a little toward repaying big-hearted old Peter for +all his kindnesses of the past. Susie may be both sophisticated and +intractable, but I await her with joy. She seems almost the answer to +my one big want. + +But Casa Grande, I have been realizing, will have to be refurbished +for its coming guest. We have grown a bit shoddy about the edges here. +It's hard to keep a house spick and span, with two active-bodied +children running about it. And my heart, I suppose, has not been in +that work of late. But I've been on a tour of inspection, and I +realize it's time to reform. So Struthers and I are about to doll up +these dilapidated quarters of ours. And I intend to have my dolorously +neglected Guest Room (for such I used to call it) done over before the +arrival of Susie.... + +I rode over to the Teetzels' this afternoon, to explain about our +cattle getting through on their land. It was the road-workers who +broke down the Teetzel fence, to squat on a coulee-corner for their +camp. And they hadn't the decency to restore what they had wrecked. So +Bud Teetzel and I rode seven miles up the new turn-pike and overtook +those road-workers and I harangued their foreman for a full fifteen +minutes. But it made little impression on him. He merely grinned and +stared at me with a sort of insolent admiration on his face. And when +I had finished he audibly remarked to one of his teamsters that I made +a fine figure of a woman on horseback. + +Bud says they're thinking of selling out if they can get their price. +The old folks want to move to Victoria, and Bud and his brother have a +hankering to try their luck up in the Peace River District. I asked +Bud if he wouldn't rather settle down in one of the big cities. He +merely laughed at me. "No thank you, lady! This old prair-ee is +comp'ny enough for me!" he said as he loped, brown as a nut, along the +trail as tawny as a lion's mane, with a sky of steel-cold blue smiling +down on his lopsided old sombrero. I studied him with a less +impersonal eye. He was a handsome and husky young giant, with the joy +of life still frankly imprinted on his face. + +"Bud," I said as I loped along beside him, "why haven't you ever +married?" + +That made him laugh again. Then he turned russet as he showed me the +white of an eye. + +"All the peaches seemed picked, in this district," he found the +courage to proclaim. + +This made me trot out the old platitude about the fish in the sea +being as good as any ever caught--and there really ought to be an +excise tax on platitudes, for being addicted to them is quite as bad +as being addicted to alcohol, and quite as benumbing to the brain. + +But Bud, with his next speech, brought me up short. + +"Say, lady, if _you_ was still in the runnin' I'd give 'em a race +that'd make a coyote look like a caterpillar on crutches!" + +He said it solemnly, and his solemnity kept it respectful. But it was +my turn to laugh. And ridiculous as it may sound, this doesn't impress +me as such a dark world as I had imagined! A woman, after all, is a +good deal like mother earth: each has to be cultivated a little to +keep it mellow. + +... Where the Female is, there also is the Unexpected. For when I got +home I found that my decorous Poppsy, my irreproachable Poppsy, had +succumbed before the temptation to investigate my new sewing-machine. +And once having nibbled at the fruit of the tree of knowledge, she +went rampaging through the whole garden. She made a stubborn effort to +exhaust the possibilities of all the little hemmers, and tried the +shirrer and the fire-stitch ruffler, and obviously had a fling at the +binder and a turn at the tucker. What she did to the tension-spring +heaven only knows. And my brand-new machine is on the blink. And my +meek-eyed little Poppsy isn't as impeccable as the world about her +imagined! + + + + +_Wednesday the Third_ + + +Susie Mumford arrived yesterday. The weather, heaven be thanked, was +perfect, an opal day with the earth as fresh-smelling as Poppsy just +out of her bath. There was just enough chill in the air to make one's +blood tingle and just enough warmth in the sunlight to make it feel +like a benediction. Whinstane Sandy, in fact, avers that we're in for +a spell of Indian Summer. + +I motored in to Buckhorn and met Susie, who wasn't in the least what I +expected. I was looking for a high-spirited and insolent-eyed young +lady who'd probably be traveling with a French maid and a van-load of +trunks, after the manner of Lady Alicia. But the Susie I met was a +tired and listless and rather white-faced girl who reminds me just +enough of her Uncle Peter to make me like her. The poor child knows +next to nothing of the continent on which she was born, and the +immensity of our West has rather appalled her. She told me, driving +home, that she had never before been this side of the Adirondacks. +Yet she has crossed the Atlantic eight times and knows western Europe +about as well as she knows Long Island itself. There is a +matter-of-factness about Susie which makes her easy to get along with. +Poppsy took to her at once and was a garrulous and happy witness of +Susie's unpacking. Dinkie, on the other hand, developed an altogether +unlooked-for shyness and turned red when Susie kissed him. There was +no melting of the ice until the strange lady produced a very wonderful +toy air-ship, which you wind up and which soars right over the +haystacks, if you start it right. This was a present which Peter sent +out. Dinkie, in fact, spent most of his spare time last night writing +a letter to his Uncle Peter, a letter which he intimated he had no +wish for the rest of the family to read. He was willing to +acknowledge, this morning, that since he and Susie both had the same +Uncle Peter, they really ought to be cousins.... + +Susie has not been sleeping well, and for all her weariness last night +had to take five grains of veronal before she could settle down. The +result is that she looks whiter than ever this morning and ate very +little of Struthers' really splendiferous breakfast. But she made a +valorous enough effort to be blithe and has rambled about Casa Grande +with the febrile, quick curiosity of a young setter, making friends +with the animals and for the first time in her life picking an egg out +of a nest. I was afraid, at first, that she was going to complain +about the quietness of existence out here, for our pace must seem a +slow one, after New York. But Susie says the one thing she wants is +peace. It's not often a girl not yet out of her teens makes any such +qualified demand on life. I can't help feeling that the break-up of +her family must be depressing her more than she pretends. She speaks +about it in a half-joking way, however, and said this morning: "Dad +certainly deserves a little freedom!" We sat for an hour at the +breakfast-table, pow-wowing about everything under the blessed sun. + +In some ways Susie is a very mature woman, for nineteen and +three-quarters. She is also an exceptionally companionable one. She +has a sort of lapis-lazuli eye with paler streaks in the iris, like +banded agate. It is a brooding eye, with a great deal of beauty in it. +And she has a magnolia-white skin which one doesn't often see on the +prairie. It's not the sort of skin, in fact, which could last very +long on the open range. It's the sort that's had too much bevel plate +between it and the buffeting winds of the world. But it's lovely to +look upon, especially when it's touched with its almost imperceptible +shell-pink of excitement as it was this afternoon when Susie climbed +on Buntie and tried a canter or two about the corrals. Susie, I +noticed, rode well. I couldn't quite make out why her riding made me +at once think of Theobald Gustav. But she explained, later, that she +had been taught by a German riding-master--and then I understood. + +But I must not overlook Gershom, who duly donned his Sunday best in +honor of Susie's arrival and who is already undertaking to educate the +brooding-eyed young lady from the East. He explained to her that there +were eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles of Canada still +unexplored, and Susie said: "Then lead me into the most far-away part +of it!" And when he told her, during their first meal together, that +the human brain was estimated to contain half a billion cells and that +the number of brain impressions collected by an average person during +fifty years of life aggregated three billion, one hundred and +fifty-five million, seven hundred and sixty thousand, Susie sighed and +said it was no wonder women were so contradictory. Which impressed me +as very like one of my own retorts to Gershom. I saw Susie studying +him, studying him with a quiet and meditative eye. "I believe your +Gershom is one of the few good men in the world," she afterward +acknowledged to me. And I've been wondering why one so young should be +saturated with cynicism. + +A small incident occurred to-night which disturbed me more than I can +explain to myself. Susie, who had been looking through one of Dinkie's +school scribblers, guardedly passed the book over to me where I sat +sewing in front of the fire. For, whatever may happen, a prairie +mother can always find plenty of sewing to do. I looked at the bottom +of the page which Susie pointed out to me. There I saw two names, one +above the other, with certain of the letters stricken out, two names +written like this: + +[E][l]m[e][r] McKai[l]----love +Do[r][e][e]n O'[L]on[e]----friendship + +[Transcriber's note: In original, letters in brackets are struck out, +each with a diagonal slash.] + +And that set me off in a brown study which even Susie seemed to +fathom. She smiled understandingly and turned and inspected Dinkie, +bent over his arithmetic, with an entirely new curiosity. + +"I suppose that's what every mother has to face, some day," she said +as she sat down beside me in front of the fire. + +But it seemed a fire without warmth. Life, apparently, had brought me +to another of its Great Divides. My boy had a secret apart from his +mother. My son was no longer all mine. + + + + +_Friday the Fifth_ + + +This morning at breakfast, when Dinkie and I were alone at the table, +I crossed over to him and sat down beside him. + +"Dinkie," I said, with my hand on his tousled young head, "whom do you +love best in all the world?" + +"Mummy!" he said, looking me straight in the eye. And at that I drank +in a deep breath. + +"Are you sure?" I demanded. + +"As sure as death and taxes," he said with his one-sided little smile. +It was a phrase which his father used to use, on similar occasions, in +the long, long ago. And it didn't quite drive the mists out of my +heart. + +"And who comes next?" I asked, with my hand still on his head. + +"Buntie," he replied, with what I suspected to be a barricaded look on +his face. + +"No, no," I told him. "It has to be a human being." + +"Then Poppsy," he admitted. + +"And who next?" I persisted. + +"Whinnie!" exclaimed my son. + +But I had to shake my head at that. + +"Aren't you forgetting somebody very important?" I hinted. + +"Who?" he asked, deepening just a trifle in color. + +"How about daddy?" I asked. "Isn't it about time for him there?" + +"Yes, daddy," he dutifully repeated. But his face cleared, and my own +heart clouded, as he went through the empty rite. + +Dinkie was studying that clouded face of mine, by this time, and I +began to feel embarrassed. But I was determined to see the thing +through. It was hard, though, for me to say what I wanted to. + +"Isn't there somebody, somebody else you are especially fond of?" I +inquired, as artlessly as I could. And it hurt like cold steel to +think that I had to fence with my own boy in such a fashion. + +Dinkie looked at me and then he looked out of the window. + +"I think I like Susie," he finally admitted. + +"But in your own life, Dinkie, in your work and your play, in your +school, isn't--isn't there _somebody_?" I found the courage to ask. + +Dinkie's face grew thoughtful. For just a moment, I thought I caught a +touch of the Holbein Astronomer in it. + +"There's lots of boys and girls I like," he noncommittally asserted. +And I began to see that it was hopeless. My boy had reservations from +his own mother, reservations which I would be compelled to respect. He +was no longer entirely and unequivocally mine. There was a wild-bird +part of him which had escaped, which I could never recapture and cage +again. The thing that his father had foretold was really coming about. +My laddie would some day grow out of my reach. I would lose him. And +my happiness, which had been trying its wings for the last few days, +came down out of the sky like a shot duck. All day long, for Susie's +sake, I've tried to be light-hearted. But my efforts make me think of +a poor old worn-out movie-hall piano doing its pathetic level best to +be magnificently blithe. It's a meaningless clatter in a meaningless +world. + + + + +_Thursday the Eleventh_ + + +It ought to be winter, according to the almanac, but our wonderful +Indian Summer weather continues. Susie and I have been "blue-doming" +to-day. We converted ourselves into a mounted escort for Gershom and +the kiddies as far as the schoolhouse, and then rode on to Dead Horse +Lake, in the hope of getting a few duck. But the weather was too fine, +though I managed to bring down a couple of mallard, after one of which +Susie, having removed her shoes and stockings, waded knee-deep in the +slough. She enjoys that sort of thing: it's something so entirely new +to the child of the city. And Susie, I might add, is already looking +much better. She is sleeping soundly, at last, and has promised me +there shall be no more night-caps of veronal. What is more, I am +getting to know her better--and I have several revisions to make. + +In the first place, it is not the family divorce cloud that has been +darkening Susie's soul. She let the cat out of the bag, on the way +home this afternoon. Susie has been in love with a man who didn't come +up to expectations. She was very much in love, apparently, and +disregarded what people said about him. Then, much to her surprise, +her Uncle Peter took a hand in the game. It must have been rather a +violent hand, for a person so habitually placid. But Peter, +apparently, wasn't altogether ignorant of the club-talk about the +young rake in question. At any rate, he decided it was about time to +act. Susie declined to explain in just what way he acted. Yet she +admits now that Peter was entirely in the right and she, for a time, +was entirely in the wrong. But it is rather like having one's appendix +cut out, she protests, without an anesthetic. It takes time to heal +such wounds. Susie obviously was bowled over. She is still suffering +from shock. But I like the spirit of the girl. She's not the kind that +one disappointment is going to kill. And prairie life is already doing +her good. For she announced this morning that her clothes were +positively getting tight for her. And such clothes they are! Such +delicate silks and cobwebs of lace and pale-pink contraptions of +satin! Such neatly tailored skirts and short-vamped shoes and +thing-a-ma-jigs of Irish linen and platinum and gold trinkets to deck +out her contemptuous little body with. For Susie takes them all with a +shrug of indifference. She loves to slip on my oil-stained old +hunting-jacket and my weather-beaten old golf-boots and go meandering +about the range. + +Another revision which I am compelled to make is that while I expected +to be the means of cheering Susie up, Susie has quite unconsciously +been the means of rejuvenating _me_. I think I've been able to catch +at least a hollow echo of her youth from her. I _know_ I have. Two +days ago, when we motored in to Buckhorn with my precious marketing of +butter and eggs--and Susie never before quite realized how butter and +eggs reached the ultimate consumer--a visiting Odd-Fellows' band was +playing a two-step on the balcony of the Commercial Hotel. Susie and I +stopped the car, and while Struthers stared at us aghast from the back +seat, we two-stepped together on the main street of Buckhorn. We just +let the music go to our heads and danced there until the crowd in +front of the band began to right-about-face and a cowboy in chaps +brazenly announced that he was Susie's next partner. So we danced to +our running-board, stepped into our devil-wagon, and headed for home, +in the icy aura of Struthers' sustained indignation. + +I begin to get terribly tired of propriety. I don't know whether it's +Struthers, or Struthers and Gershom combined, or having to watch one's +step so when there are children about one. But I'm tired of being +respectable. I'm tired of holding myself in. I warn the world that I'm +about ready for anything, anything from horse-stealing to putting a +dummy-lady in Whinstane Sandy's bed. I don't believe there's any +wickedness that's beyond me. I'm a reckless and abandoned woman. And +if that cold-blooded old Covenanter doesn't get home from Calgary +pretty soon I'm going buckboard riding with Bud Teetzel! + +I've been asking Susie if we measure up to her expectations. She said, +in reply, that we fitted in to a T. For her Uncle Peter, she +acknowledged, had already done us in oils on the canvas of her +curiosity. She accused me, however, of reveling in that primitiveness +which is the last resort of the sophisticated--like the log cabins the +city folk fashion for themselves when they get up in the Adirondacks. +And Casa Grande, she further amended, impressed her as being almost +disappointingly comfortable. + +After that Susie fell to talking about Peter. She is affectionately +contemptuous toward her uncle, protesting that he's forever throwing +away his chances and letting other people impose on his good nature. +It was lucky, averred Susie, that he was born with a silver spoon in +his mouth. For he was a hopeless espouser of Lost Causes. She inclined +to the belief that he should have married young, should have married +young and had a flock of children, for he was crazy about kiddies. + +I asked Susie what sort of wife Peter should have chosen. And Susie +said Peter should have hitched up with a good, capable, +practical-minded woman who could manage him without letting him know +he was being managed. There was a widow in the East, acknowledged his +niece, who had been angling for poor Peter for years. And Peter was +still free, Susie suspected, because in the presence of that widow he +emulated Hamlet and always put an antic disposition on. Did the most +absurd things, and appeared to be little more than half-witted. The +widow in question had even spoken to Susie about her uncle's +eccentricities and intimated that his segregative manner of life might +in the end affect his intellect! + +The thought of Peter marrying rather gave me a shock. It was like +being told by some authority in astronomy that your earth was about to +collide with Wernecke's Comet. And, vain peacock that I was, I rather +liked to think of Peter going through life mourning for me, alone and +melancholy and misogynistic for the rest of his days! Yet there must +be dozens, there must be hundreds, of attractive girls along the paths +which he travels. I found the courage to mention this fact to Susie, +who merely laughed and said her Uncle Peter would probably be saved by +his homeliness. But I can't say that I ever regarded Peter Ketley as +homely. He may never carry off a blue ribbon from a beauty show, but +he has the sort of face that a woman of sense can find tremendous +appeal in. Your flapper type, I suppose, will always succumb to the +curled Romeo, but it's the ruggeder and stronger man with the bright +mind and the kindly heart who will always appeal to the clearer-eyed +woman who has come to know life.... Susie has told me, by the way, +that Josie Langdon and her husband quarreled on their honeymoon, +quarreled the first week in Paris and right across the Continent for +the momentous reason that Josie _insisted on putting sugar in her +claret_! + +I've been doing a good deal of thinking, the last few hours. I've been +wondering if I'm a Lost Cause. And I've been wondering why women +should want to put sugar in their claret. If it's made to be bitter, +why not accept the bitterness, and let it go at that? + + + + +_Friday the Twelfth_ + + +Dinky-Dunk has just sent word that he will be home to-morrow night and +asks if I'll mind motoring in to Buckhorn for him. + +It impresses me as a non-committal little message, yet it means more +to me than I imagined. _My husband is coming home._ + +Susie has been eying me all afternoon, with a pucker of perplexity +about her lapis-lazuli eyes. We are busy, getting things to rights. +And I've made an appallingly long list of what I must buy in Buckhorn +to-morrow. Even Struthers has perked up a bit, and is making furtive +preparations for a sage-tea wash in the morning. + + + + +_Tuesday the Sixteenth_ + + +Why is life so tangled up? Why can't we be either completely happy or +completely the other way? Why must wretchedness come sandwiched in +between slices of hope and contentment, and why must happiness be +haunted by some ghostly echo of pain? And why can't people be all good +or all bad, so that the tares and the wheat never get mixed up +together and make a dismal mess of our harvest of Expectation? + +These are some of the questions I've been asking myself since Duncan +went back to Calgary last night. He stayed only two days. And they +were days of terribly complicated emotions. I went to the station for +him, on Saturday, and in my impatience to be there on time found +myself with an hour and a half of waiting, an hour and a half of +wandering up and down that ugly open platform in the clear cool light +of evening. There was a hint of winter in the air, an intimidating +northern nip which made the thought of a warm home and an open fire a +consolation to the chilled heart. And I felt depressed, in spite of +everything I could do to bolster up my courage. In the first place, I +couldn't keep from thinking of Alsina Teeswater. And in the second +place, never, never on the prairie, have I watched a railway-train +come in or a railway-train pass away without feeling lonesome. It +reminds me how big is the outside world, how infinitesimal is Chaddie +McKail and her unremembered existence up here a thousand miles from +Nowhere! It humbles me. It reminds me that I have in some way failed +to mesh in with the bigger machinery of life. + +I had a lump in my throat, by the time Dinky-Dunk's train pulled in +and I saw him swing down from the car-steps. I made for him through +the crowd, in fact, with my all but forgotten Australian crawl-stroke, +and accosted him with rather a briny kiss and so tight a hug that he +stood back and studied my face. He wanted to ask, I know, if anything +had happened. He was obviously startled, and just a trifle +embarrassed. My lump, by this time, was bigger than ever, but I had to +swallow it in secret. Dinky-Dunk, I found, was changed in many ways. +He was tired, and he seemed older. But he was prosperous-looking, in +brand-new raiment, and reported that luck was still with him and +everything was flourishing. Give him one year, he protested, and he'd +show them he wasn't a piker. + +I waited for him to ask about the children, but his mind seemed full +of his Barcona coal business. The railway was learning to treat them +half decently and the coal was coming out better than they'd hoped +for. They'd a franchise to light the town, developing their power from +the mine screenings, and what they got from this would be so much +velvet. And he had a chance to take over one of the finest houses in +Mount Royal, if he had a family along with him to excuse such +magnificence. + +That final speech of his brought me up short. It was dark along the +trail, and dark in my heart. And more things than one had happened +that day to humble me. So I took one hand off the wheel and put it on +his knee. + +"Do you want me to go to Calgary?" I asked him. + +"That's up to you," he said, without budging an inch. He said it, in +fact, with a steel-cold finality which sent my soul cringing back into +its kennel. And the trail ahead of me seemed blacker than ever. + +"I'll have to have time to think it over," I said with a composure +which was nine-tenths pretense. + +"Some wives," he remarked, "are willing to help their husbands." + +"I know it, Dinky-Dunk," I acknowledged, hoping against hope he'd give +me the opening I was looking for. "And I want to help, if you'll only +let me." + +"I think I'm doing my part," he rather solemnly asserted. I couldn't +see his face, in the dark, but there was little hope to be wrung from +the tone of his voice. So I knew it would be best to hold my peace. + +Casa Grande blazed a welcome to us, as we drove up to it, and the +children, thank heaven, were relievingly boisterous over the adventure +of their dad's return. He seemed genuinely amazed at their growth, +seemed slightly irritated at Dinkie's long stares of appraisal, and +feigned an interest in the paraded new possessions of Poppsy and her +brother--until it came to Peter's toy air-ship, which was thrust +almost bruskly aside. + +And that reminds me of one thing which I am reluctant to acknowledge. +Dinky-Dunk was anything but nice to Susie. He may have his perverse +reasons for disliking everything in any way connected with Peter +Ketley, but I at least expected my husband to be agreeable to the +casual guest under his roof. Through it all, I must confess, Susie +was wonderful. She made no effort to ignore Duncan, as his ignoring of +her only too plainly merited. She remained, not only poised and +imperturbable, but impersonal and impenetrable. She found herself, I +think, driven just a tiny bit closer to Gershom, who still shows a +placid exterior to Duncan's slightly contemptuous indifference. + +My husband, I'm afraid, was not altogether happy in his own home. In +one way, of course, I can not altogether blame him for that, since his +bigger interests now are outside that home. But I begin to see how +dangerous these long separations can be. Somewhere and at some time, +before too much water runs under the bridges, there will have to be a +readjustment. + +I realized that, in fact, as I drove Duncan back to the station last +night, after I'd duly signed the different papers he'd brought for +that purpose. I had a feeling that every chug of the motor was +carrying him further and further out of my life. Heaven knows, I was +willing enough to eat crow. I was ready to bury the hatchet, and bury +it in my own bosom, if need be, rather than see it swinging free to +strike some deeper blow. + +"Dinky-Dunk," I said after a particularly long silence between us, +"what is it you want me to do?" + +My heart was beating much faster than he could have imagined and I was +grateful for the chance to pretend the road was taking up most of my +attention. + +"Do about what?" he none too encouragingly inquired. + +"We don't seem to be hitting it off the way we should be," I went on, +speaking as quietly as I was able. "And I want you to tell me where +I'm failing to do my share." + +That note of humility from me must have surprised him a little, for we +rode quite a distance without a word. + +"What makes you feel that way?" he finally asked. + +I found it hard to answer that question. It would never be easy, at +any rate, to answer it as I wanted to. + +"Because things can't go on this way forever," I found the courage to +tell him. + +"Why not?" he asked. He seemed indifferent again. + +"Because they're all wrong," I rather tremulously replied. "Can't you +see they're all wrong?" + +"But why do you want them changed?" he asked with a disheartening sort +of impersonality. + +"For the sake of the children," I told him. And I could feel the +impatient movement of his body on the car seat beside me. + +"The children!" he repeated with acid-drop deliberation. "The +children, of course! It's always the children!" + +"You're still their father," I reminded him. + +"A sort of honorary president of the family," he amended. + +Hope ebbed out of my heart, like air out of a punctured tire. + +"Aren't you making it rather hard for me?" I demanded, trying to hold +myself in, but feeling the bob-cat getting the better of the purring +tabby. + +"I've rather concluded that was the way you made it for _me_," +countered Duncan, with a coolness of manner which I came more and more +to resent. + +"In what way?" I asked. + +"In shutting up shop," he rather listlessly responded. + +"I don't think I quite understand," I told him. + +"Well, in crowbarring me out of your scheme of life, if you insist on +knowing," were the words that came from the husband sitting so close +beside me. "You had your other interests, of course. But you also +seem to have had the idea that you could turn me loose like a range +horse. I could paw for my fodder and eat snow when I got thirsty. You +didn't even care to give me a wind-break to keep a forty-mile blizzard +out of my bones. You didn't know where I was browsing, and didn't much +care. It was up to me to rustle for myself and be rounded up when the +winter was over and there was another spell of work on hand!" + +We rode on in silence, for almost a mile, with the cold air beating +against my body and a colder numbness creeping about the corner of my +heart. + +"Do you mean, Dinky-Dunk," I finally asked, "that you want your +freedom?" + +"I'm not saying that," he said, after another short silence. + +"Then what is it you want?" I asked, wondering why the windshield +should look so blurred in the half-light. + +"I want to get something out of life," was his embittered retort. + +It was a retort that I thought over, thought over with an oddly +settling mind, like a stirred pool that has been left to clear itself. +For that grown man sitting there beside me seemed ridiculously like a +spoiled child, an indulged child forlornly alone in the fogs of his +own arrogance. He made me think of a black bear which bites at the +bullet wound in his own body. I felt suddenly sorry for him, in a +maternal sort of way. I felt sorry for him at the same time that I +remained a trifle afraid of him, for he still possessed, I knew, his +black-bear power of inflicting unlooked-for and ursine blows. I simply +ached to swing about on him and say: "Dinky-Dunk, what you need is a +good spanking!" But I didn't have the courage. I had to keep my sense +of humor under cover, just as you have to blanket garden-geraniums +before the threat of a black frost. Yet, oddly enough, I felt +fortified by that sense of pity. It seemed to bring with it the +impression that Duncan was still a small boy who might some day grow +out of his badness. It made me feel suddenly older and wiser than this +overgrown child who was still crying for the moon. And with that +feeling came a wave of tolerance, followed by a smaller wave of faith, +of faith that everything might yet come out right, if only I could +learn to be patient, as mothers are patient with children. + +"And I, on my part, Dinky-Dunk, want to see you get the very best out +of life," I found myself saying to him. My intentions were good, but I +suppose I made my speech in a very superior and school-teachery sort +of way. + +"I guess I've got about all that's coming to me," he retorted, with +the note of bitterness still in his voice. + +And again I had the feeling of sitting mother-wise and mother-patient +beside an unruly small boy. + +"There's much more, Dinky-Dunk, if you only ask for it," I said as +gently as I was able. + +He turned, at that, and studied me in the failing light, studied me +with a sharp look of interrogation on his face. I had the feeling, as +he did so, of something epochal in the air, as though the drama of +life were narrowing up to its climactic last moment. Yet I felt +helpless to direct the course of that drama. I nursed the impression +that we stood at the parting of the ways, that we stood hesitating at +the fork of two long and lonely trails which struck off across an +illimitable world, farther and farther apart. I vaguely regretted that +we were already in the streets of Buckhorn, for I was half hoping that +Duncan would tell me to stop the car. Then I vaguely regretted that I +was busy driving that car, as otherwise I might have been free to get +my arms about that granitic Dour Man of mine and strangle him into +submitting to that momentary mood of softness which seems to come less +and less to the male as he grows older. + +But Duncan merely laughed, a bit uneasily, and just as suddenly grew +silent again. I had a sense of asbestos curtains coming down between +us, coming down before the climax was reached or the drama was ended. +I couldn't help wondering, as we drove into the cindered station-yard +where the lights were already twinkling, if Dinky-Dunk, like myself, +sat waiting for something which failed to manifest itself, if he too +had held back before the promise of some decisive word which I was +without the power to utter. For we were only half-warm, the two of us, +toying with the ghosts of the dead past and childishly afraid of the +future. We were Laodiceans, neither hot nor cold, without the primal +hunger to reach out and possess what we too timidly desired. We were +more neutral even than Ferdinand and the Lady of the Bust, for we no +longer cared sufficiently to let the other know we cared, but waited +and waited in that twilight where all cats are gray. + +There was, mercifully, very little time left for us before the train +came in. We kept our masks on, and talked only of every-day things, +about the receipt for the ranch taxes and what steers Whinnie should +"finish" and the new granary roof and the fire-lines about the +haystacks. Without quite knowing it, when the train pulled in, I put +my arm through my husband's--and for the second time that evening he +turned sharply and inspected my face. I felt as though I wanted to +hold him back, to hold him back from something unescapable but +tragically momentous. I think he felt sorry for me. At any rate, after +he had swung his suit-case up on the car-platform, he turned and +kissed me good-by. But it was the sort of kiss one gets at funerals. +It left me standing there watching the tail-lights blink off down the +track, as desolate as though I had been left alone on the deadest +promontory of the deadest planet lost in space. I stood there until +the lights were gone. I stood there until the platform was empty again +and my car was the only car left along the hard-packed cinders. So I +climbed into the driving-seat, and pulled on my gauntlets, and headed +for home.... + +Back at Casa Grande I found Dinkie and Whinnie beside the bunk-house +stove, struggling companionably through the opening chapters of +_Treasure Island_. My boy smiled up at me, for a moment, but his +mind, I could see, was intent on the page along which Whinnie's +stubbled finger was crawling like a plowshare beside each furrow of +text. He was in the South Pacific, a thousand miles away from me. In +my own house Struthers was putting a petulant-voiced Poppsy to bed, +and Gershom, up in his room, was making extraordinary smells at his +chemistry experiments. Susie I found curled comfortably up in front of +the fire, idling over my first volume of _Jean Christophe_. + +She read three sentences aloud as I sat down beside her. "How happy he +is! He is made to be happy!...Life will soon see to it that he is +brought to reason." + +She seemed to expect some comment from me, but I found myself with +nothing to say. In fact, we both sat there for a long time, staring in +silence at the fire. + +"Why do you live with a man you don't love?" she suddenly asked out of +the utter stillness. + +It startled me, that question. It also embarrassed me, for I could +feel my color mount as Susie's lapis-lazuli eyes rested on my face. + +"What makes you think I don't love him?" I countered, reminding myself +that Susie, after all, was still a girl in her teens. + +"It's not a matter of thinking," was Susie's quiet retort. "I _know_ +you don't." + +"Then I wish I could be equally certain," I said with a defensive +stiffening of the lines of dignity. + +But Susie smiled rather wearily at my forlorn little parade of +_hauteur_. Then she looked at the fire. + +"It's hell, isn't it, being a woman?" she finally observed, +unconsciously paraphrasing a much older philosopher. + +"Sometimes," I admitted. + +"I don't see why you stand it," was her next meditative shaft in my +direction. + +"What would you do about it?" I guardedly inquired. + +Susie's face took on one of its intent looks. She was only in her +teens, but life, after all, hadn't dealt over-lightly with her. She +impressed me, at the moment, as a secretly ardent young person whose +hard-glazed little body might be a crucible of incandescent though +invisible emotions. + +"What would you do about it?" I repeated, wondering what gave some +persons the royal right of doing the questionable and making it seem +unquestionable. + +"_Live!_" said Susie with quite unlooked-for emphasis. +"_Live_--whatever it costs!" + +"Wouldn't you regard this as living?" I asked, after a moment of +thought. + +"Not as you ought to be," averred Susie. + +"Why not?" I parried. + +Susie sighed. She began to see that it was beyond argument, I suppose. +Then she too had her period of silence. + +"But what are you getting out of it?" she finally demanded. "What is +going to happen? What ever _has_ happened?" + +"To whom?" I asked, resenting the unconscious cruelty of her +questioning. + +"To you," was the reply of the hard-glazed young hedonist confronting +me. + +"Are you flattering me with the inference that I was cut out for +better things?" I interrogated as my gaze met Susie's. It was her turn +to color up a bit. Then she sighed again, and shook her head. + +"I don't suppose it's doing either of us one earthly bit of good," she +said with a listless small smile of atonement. "And I'm sorry." + +So we let the skeletons stalk away from our pleasant fireside and +secrete themselves in their customary closets of silence. + +But I've been thinking a good deal about that question of Susie's. +What _has_ happened to me, out here on the prairie? What has indeed +come into my life?... + +I married young and put a stop to those romantic adventurings which +enrich the lives of most girls and enlighten the days of many women. I +married a man and lived with him in a prairie shack, and sewed and +baked for him, and built a new home and lost it, and began over again. +I had children, and saw one of them die, and felt my girlhood slip +away, and sold butter and eggs, and loved the man of my choice and +cleaved to him and planned for my children, until I saw the man of my +choice love another woman. And still I clung to my sparless hulk of a +home, hoping to hold close about me the children I had brought into +the world and would some day lose again to the world. And that was +all. That was everything. It is true, nothing much has ever happened +to me.... + +But I stop, to think this over. If these are the small things, then +what are the big things of life? What is it that other women get? I +have sung and been happy; I have known great joy and walked big with +Hope. I have loved and been loved. I have known sorrow, and I have +known birth, and I have sat face to face with death. I have, after +all, pretty well run the whole gamut, without perhaps realizing it. +For these, after all, are the big things, the elemental things, of +life. They are the basic things which leave scant room for the +momentary fripperies and the hand-made ornaments of existence.... + +Heigho! I seem to grow into a melancholy Jacques with the advancing +years. That's the way of life, I suppose. But I've no intention of +throwing up the sponge. If I can no longer get as much fun out of the +game as I want, I can at least watch my offspring taking their joy out +of it. God be thanked for giving us our children! We can still rest +our tired old eyes on them, just as the polisher of precious stones +used to keep an emerald in front of him, to relieve his strained +vision by gazing at its soft and soothing greenness. + +I have just crept in to take a look at my precious Dinkie, fast asleep +in the old cast-iron crib that is growing so small for him he has to +lie catercornered on his mattress. He seemed so big, stretched out +there, that he frightened me with the thought he couldn't be a child +much longer. There are no babies left now in my home circle. And I +still have a shamefaced sort of hankering to hold a baby in my arms +again! + + + + +_Wednesday the Thirty-First_ + + +Susie has promised to stay with us until after Christmas. And the +holidays, I realize, are only a few weeks away. Struthers is knitting +a sweater of flaming red and rather grimly acknowledged, when I pinned +her down, that it was for Whinstane Sandy. There was a snow-flurry +Sunday, and Gershom took Susie riding in the old cutter, scratching +grittily along the half-covered trails but apparently enjoying it. My +poor little Poppsy, who rather idolizes Gershom, is transparently +jealous of his attentions to Susie. Yet Gershom, I know, is nice to +Susie and nothing more. He is still my loyal but carefully restrained +knight. It's a shame, I suppose, to bobweasel him the way I +occasionally do. But I can't quite help it. His goody-goodiness is as +provocative to my baser nature as a red flag to an Andulasian bull. +And a woman who was once reckoned as a heart-breaker has to keep her +hand in with _something_. I've got to convince myself that the last +shot hasn't gone from the locker which Duncan Argyll McKail once +rifled. I spoiled Gershom's supper for him the other night by asking +what it was made some people have such a mysterious influence over +other people. And I caught him up short, last Sunday morning, when he +tried to argue that I was a sort of paragon in petticoats. + +"Don't you run away with the idea I'm that kind of an angel," I +promptly assured him. "I'm an outlaw, from saddle to sougan, and I can +buck like a bear fightin' bees. I'm a she-devil crow-hopping around in +skirts. And I could bu'st every commandment slap-bang across my knee, +once I got started, and leave a trail of crime across the fair face of +nature that would make an old Bow-Gun vaquero's back-hair stand up. +I'm just a woman, Gershom, a little lonely and a little loony, and +there's so much backed-up bad in me that once the dam gives way +there'll be a hell-roaring old whoop-up along these dusty old +trails!" + +Gershom turned white. + +"But there's your little ones to think of," he quaveringly reminded +me. + +"Yes, there's my little ones to think of," I echoed, wondering where +I'd heard that familiar old refrain before. My bark, after all, is +much worse than my bite. About all I can do is take things out in +talk. I'm only a faded beauty, brooding over my antique adventures as +a heart-breaker. But I know of one heart I'd still like to break--if I +had the power. No; not break; but bend up to the cracking point! + + + + +_Monday the Nineteenth_ + + +How Time takes wing for the busy! It's only six days to Christmas and +I've still my box to get off for Olga and her children. We've sent to +Peter some really charming snap-shots of the children, which Susie +took. The general effect of one, I must acknowledge, is seriously +damaged by the presence of their Mummy. + +Dinky-Dunk doubts if he'll be able to get home for the holidays. But I +sent him a box, on Saturday, made up of those things which he likes +best to eat and a set of the children's pictures, nicely mounted. I've +also had Dinkie and Poppsy write a long letter to their dad, a task +which they performed with more constraint than I had anticipated. I +had my own difficulties, along the same line, for I had taken a +photograph of poor little Pee-Wee's grave with a snow-drift across one +end of it, and had written on the bottom of the mounting-card: "_We +must remember._" But as I stood studying this, before putting it in +next to Poppsy's huge Christmas-card gay with powdered mica I felt a +foolish tear or two run down my cheek. And I realized it would never +do to cloud my Dinky-Dunk's day with memories which might not be +altogether happy. So I've kept the picture of the little white-fenced +bed with the white snow-drift across its foot.... + +Susie is in bed with a bad cold, which she caught studying astronomy +with Gershom. Poppsy was not in the least put out when she watched me +preparing a mustard-plaster for the invalid. My daughter, I am +persuaded, has a revived faith in the operation of retributive +justice. But I hope Susie is better by the holiday. Whinnie has the +Christmas Tree hidden away in the stable, and already a number of +mysterious parcels have arrived at Casa Grande. Bud Teetzel very +gallantly sent me over a huge turkey, an eighteen-pounder, and +to-morrow I have to go into Buckhorn for my mail-order shipments. We +have decorated the house with a whole box of holly from Victoria and +I've hung a sprig of mistletoe in the living-room doorway. The +children, of course, are on tiptoe with expectation. But I can't +escape the impression that I'm merely acting a part, that I'm a +Pagliacci in petticoats. Heaven knows I clown enough; no one can +accuse me of not going through the gestures. But it seems like +fox-trotting along the deck of a sinking ship. + +I stood under the mistletoe, this morning, and dared Gershom to kiss +me. He turned quite white and made for the door. But I caught him by +the coat, like Potiphar's wife, and pulled him back to the authorizing +berry-sprig and gave him a brazen big smack on the cheek-bone. He +turned a sunset pink, at that, and marched out of the room without +saying a word. But he was shaking his head as he went, at my +shamelessness, I suppose. Poor old Gershom! I wish there were more men +in the world like him. The other day Susie intimated that he was too +homosexual and that it was the polygamous wretches who really kept the +world going. But I refuse to subscribe to that sophomoric philosophy +of hers which would divide the race into fools and knaves. "It's safer +being sane than mad; it's better being good than bad!" as Robert +remarked. And I know at least one strong man who is not bad; and one +bad man who is not strong. + + + + +_Tuesday the Twenty-Seventh_ + + +The great Day has come and gone. And I'm not sorry. There was a cloud +over my heart that kept me from getting the happiness out of it I +ought. I hoped we would hear from Peter, but for the first time in +history he overlooked us. + +Dinky-Dunk, as he had warned us, could not get home for the holidays. +But he surprised me by sending a really wonderful box for the kiddies, +and even a gorgeous silver-mounted collar for Scotty. Susie is up +again, but she is still feeling a bit listless. I heard Gershom +informing her to-night that her blood travels at the rate of seven +miles per hour and that if all the energy of Niagara Falls were +utilized it could supply the world with seven million horse-power. I +do wish Gershom would get over trying to pat the world on the head, +instead of shaking hands with it! I'm afraid I'm losing my lilt. I +can't understand why I should keep feeling as blue as indigo. I am a +well of acid and a little sister to the crab-apple. I think I'll make +Susie come down so we can humanize ourselves with a little music. For +I feel like a Marie Bashkirtseff with a bilious attack.... + +Whinstane Sandy has just come in with Peter's box, two days late. I +felt sure that Peter would not utterly forget us. There is still a +great deal of shouting down in the kitchen, where that most miraculous +of boxes has been unpacked. As for myself, I've had a hankering to be +alone, to think things over. But my meditations don't seem to get me +anywhere.... Dinkie has just come up to show me his brand-new bridle +for Buntie. It is a magnificent bridle, as shiny and jingly as any lad +could desire. I tried to get him to put it down, so that I could draw +him over close to me and talk to him. But Dinkie is too excited for +any such demonstration. He's beginning, I'm afraid, to consider +emotion a bit unmanly. He seems to be losing his craving to be petted +and pampered. There are times, I can see, when he desires his +fence-lines to be respected. + + + + +_Sunday the Twenty-Ninth_ + + +Nearly six weeks, I notice, have slipped by. For a month and a half, +apparently, the impulse to air my troubles went hibernating with the +bears. Yet it has been a mild winter, so far, with very little snow +and a great deal of sunshine--a great deal of sunshine which doesn't +elate me as it ought. I can't remember who it was said a happy people +has no history. But that's not true of a happy woman. It's when her +heart is full that she makes herself heard, that she sings like a lark +to the world. When she's wretched, she retires with her grief.... + +I haven't been altogether wretched, it's true, just as I haven't been +altogether hilarious, but it disturbs me to find that for a month and +a half I haven't written a line in this, the mottled old book of my +life. It's not that the last month or two has been empty, for no +months are really empty. They have to be filled with something. But +there are times, I suppose, when lives lie fallow, the same as fields +lie fallow, times when the days drag like harrow-teeth across the +perplexed loam of our soul and nothing comes of it at all. Not, I +repeat, that I have been momentously unhappy. It's more that a sort of +sterilizing indifferency took possession of me and made the little ups +and downs of existence as unworthy of record as the ups and downs of +the waves on the deadest shores of the Dead Sea. It's not that I'm +idle, and it's not that I'm old, and it's not that there's anything +wrong with this disappointingly healthy body of mine. But I rather +think I need a change of some kind. I even envy Susie, who has ambled +on to the Coast and is staying with the Lougheeds in Victoria, playing +golf and picking winter roses and writing back about her trips up +Vancouver Island and her approaching journey down into California. + +"What do we know of the New World," she parodied in her last letter +that came to me, "who only the old East know?" Then she goes on to +say: "I'm just back from a West Coast trip on the roly-poly _Maquinna_ +and if my thoughts go wobbly and my hand goes crooked it's because my +head is so prodigiously full of + +SEALS +SALMON +SUNSETS +STARS +SURF +SOLANDER ISLAND +SIWASHES +SAGHALIE LAMONTIS +SKOOKUM CHUCK +SEA-LIONS + +[Transcriber's note: In original, initial "S" was one very large +decorative letter, 10 letter-heights tall.] + +and alas, also _Seasickness_, that I can't think straight!" + +Susie's soul, apparently, has had the dry-shampoo it was in need of. +But as for me, I'm like an old horse-shoe with its calks worn off. The +Master-Blacksmith of Life should poke me deep into His fires and fling +me on His anvil and make me over! + +I've been worrying about my Dinkie. It's all so trivial, in a way, and +yet I can't persuade myself it isn't also tragic. He told Susie, +before she left, that he was quite willing to go to bed a little +earlier one night, because then "he could dream about Doreen." And I +noticed, not long ago, that instead of taking just _one_ of our Newton +Pippins to school with him, he had formed the habit of taking _two_. +On making investigation, I discovered that this second apple +ultimately and invariably found its way into the hands of Mistress +Doreen O'Lone. And last week Dinkie autocratically commanded Whinstane +Sandy to hitch Mudski up in the old cutter, to go sleigh-riding with +the lady of his favor to the Teetzels' taffy-pull. Dinkie's mother was +not consulted in the matter--and that is the disturbing feature of it +all. I can't help remembering what Duncan once said about my boy +growing out of my reach. If I ever lost my Dinkie I would indeed be +alone, terribly and hopelessly alone. + + + + +_Wednesday the Eighth_ + + +Dinkie, who has been disturbing me the last few days by going about +with an air of suppressed excitement, brought my anxiety to a head +yesterday by staring into my face and then saying: + +"Mummy, I've got a secret!" + +"What secret?" I asked, doing my best to appear indifferent. + +But Dinkie was not to be trapped. + +"It wouldn't be a secret, if I told you," he sagaciously explained. + +I studied my child with what was supposed to be a reproving eye. + +"You mean you can't even tell your own Mummy?" I demanded. + +He shook his head, in solemn negation. + +"But can you, some day?" I pursued. + +He thought this over. + +"Yes, some day," he acknowledged, squeezing my knee. + +"How long will I have to wait?" I asked, wondering what could bring +such a rhapsodic light into his hazel-specked eye. I thought, of +course, of Doreen O'Lone. And I wished the O'Lones would follow in the +footsteps of so many other successful ranchers and trek off to +California. Then, as I sat studying Dinkie, I countermanded that wish. +For its fulfillment would bring loneliness to the heart of my +laddie--and loneliness is hell! So, instead, I struggled as best I +could to banish all thought of the matter from my mind. But it was +only half a success. I remembered that Gershom himself had been going +about as abstracted as an ant-eater and as gloomy as a crow, during +the last week; and I kept sniffing something unpropitious up-wind. I +even hoped that Dinkie would return to the subject, as children with a +secret have the habit of doing. But he has been as tight-lipped on the +matter as his reticent old dad might have been. + + + + +_Wednesday the Fifteenth_ + + +I got an altogether unlooked-for Valentine yesterday. It was a brief +but a significant letter from Dinky-Dunk, telling me that he had +"taken over" the Goodhue house in Mount Royal and asking me if I +intended to be its mistress. He has bought the house, apparently, +completely furnished and is getting ready to move into it the first +week in March. + +The whole thing has rather taken my breath away. I don't object to an +ultimatum, but I do dislike to have it come like a bolt from the blue. +I have arrived at my Rubicon, all right, and about everything that's +left of my life, I suppose, will hang on my decision. I don't know +whether to laugh or to cry, to be horrified or hilarious. At one +moment I have a tendency to emulate Marguerite doing the Jewel-Song in +_Faust_. "This isn't _me_! This isn't _me_!" I keep protesting to +myself. But Marguerite, I know, would never be so ungrammatical. And +then I begin to foresee difficulties. The mere thought of leaving Casa +Grande tears my heart. When we go away, as that wise man of Paris +once said, we die a little. This will always seem my home. I could +never forsake it utterly. I dread to forsake it for even a portion of +each year. I am a part of the prairie, now, and I could never be +entirely happy away from it. And to accept that challenge--for however +one may look at it, it remains a challenge--and go to the new home in +Calgary would surely be another concession. And I have been conceding, +conceding, for the sake of my children. How much more can I concede? + +Yet, when all is said and done, I am one of a family. I am not a free +agent. I am chained to the oar for life. When we link up with the race +we have more than the little ring of our own Ego to remember. It is +not, as Dinky-Dunk once pointed out to me, a good thing to get +"Indianized." We have our community obligations and they must be +faced. The children, undoubtedly, would have advantages in the city. +And to find my family reunited would be "_le desir de paraitre_." But +I can't help remembering how much there is to remember. I'm humbler +now, it's true, than I once was. I no longer say "One side, please!" +to life, while life, like old Major Elmes on Murray Hill, declines to +vary its course for one small and piping voice. Instead of getting +gangway, I find, I'm apt to get an obliterating thump on the spine. +Heaven knows, I want to do the right thing. But the issue seems so +hopelessly tangled. I have brooded over it and I have even prayed over +it. But it all seems to come to nothing. I sometimes nurse a ghostly +sort of hope that it may be taken out of my hands, that some power +outside myself may intervene to decide. For it impresses me as ominous +that I should be able to hesitate at such a time, when a woman, for +once in her life, should know her own mind, should see her own fixed +goal and fight her way to it. I've been wondering if I haven't ebbed +away into that half-warm impersonality which used to impress me as the +last stage in moral decay. + +But I'm not the fishy type of woman. I know I'm not. And I'm not a +hard-head. I've always had a horror of being hard, for fear my +hardness might in some way be passed on to my Dinkie. I want to keep +my boy kindly and considerate of others, and loyal to the people who +love him. But I balk at that word "loyal." For if I expect loyalty in +my offspring I surely must have it myself. And I stood up before a +minister of God, not so many years ago, and took an oath to prove +loyal to my husband, to cleave to him in sickness and in health. I +also took an oath to honor him. But he has made that part of the +compact almost impossible. And my children, if I go back to him, will +come under his influence. And I can't help questioning what that +influence will be. I have only one life to live. And I have a human +anxiety to get out of it all that is coming to me. I even feel that it +owes me something, that there are certain arrears of happiness to be +made up.... I wish I had a woman, older and wiser than myself, to talk +things over with. I have had the impulse to write to Peter, and tell +him everything, and ask him what I ought to do. But that doesn't +impress me as being quite fair to Peter. And, oddly enough, it doesn't +impress me as being quite fair to Dinky-Dunk. So I'm going to wait a +week or two and let the cream of conviction rise on the pan of +indecision. There's a tiny parliament of angels, in the inner chambers +of our heart, who talk these things over and decide them while we +sleep. + + + + +_Friday the Seventeenth_ + + +We had to dig in, like bears, for two whole days while the first real +snow-storm of the winter raged outside. But the skies have cleared, +the wind has gone, and the weather is crystal-clear again. Dinkie and +Poppsy, furred to the ears, are out on the drifts learning to use the +snow-shoes which Percy and Olga sent down to them for Christmas. +Dinkie has made himself a spear by lashing his broken-bladed +jack-knife to the handle of my headless dutch-hoe and has converted +himself into a stealthy Iluit stalking a polar bear in the form of +poor old Scotty, who can't quite understand why he is being driven so +relentlessly from crevice to Arctic crevice. They have also built an +igloo, and indulged in what is apparently marriage by capture, with +the reluctant bride making her repeated escape by floundering over +drifts piled even higher than the fence-tops. It makes me hanker to +get my own snow-shoes on my moccasined feet again and go trafficking +over that undulating white world of snow, where barb-wire means no +more than a line-fence in Noah's Flood. No one could remain morose, +in weather like this. You must dress for it, of course, since that +arching blue sky has sword-blades of cold sheathed in its velvety soft +azure. But it goes to your head, like wine, and you wonder what makes +you feel that life is so well worth living. + + + + +_Tuesday, the Twenty-First_ + + +The armistice continues. And I continue to sit on my keg of powder and +sing "_O Sole Mio_" to the northern moon. + +I have had Whinstane Sandy build a toboggan-slide out of the old +binder-shed, which has been pretty well blown to pieces by last +summer's wind-storms. He picked out the soundest of the two-by-fours +and made a framework which he boarded over with the best of the +weather-bleached old siding. For when you haven't the luxury of a hill +on your landscape, you can at least make an imitation one. Whinnie +even planed the board-joints in the center of the runway and +counter-sunk every nail-head--and cussed volubly when he pounded his +heavily mittened thumb with the hammer. The finished structure could +hardly be called a thing of beauty. We have only one of the +stable-ladders to mount it from the rear, and instead of toboggans we +have only Poppsy's home-made hand-sleigh and Dinkie's somewhat +dilapidated "flexible coaster." But when water had been carried out +to that smooth runway and the boards had been coated with ice, like +brazil-nuts _glace_, and the snow along the lower course had been well +packed down, it at least gave you a run for your money. + +The tip-top point of the slide couldn't have been much more than +fourteen or fifteen feet above the prairie-floor, but it seemed +perilous enough when I tried it out--much to the perturbation of +Whinstane Sandy--by lying stomach-down on Dinkie's coaster and letting +myself shoot along that well-iced incline. It was a kingly sensation, +that of speed wedded to danger, and it took me back to Davos at a +breath. Then I tried it with Dinkie, and then with Poppsy, and then +with Poppsy and Dinkie together. We had some grand old tumbles, in the +loose snow, and some unmentionable bruises, before we became +sufficiently expert to tool our sleigh-runners along their proper +trail. But it was good fun. The excitement of the thing, in fact, +rather got into my blood. In half an hour the three of us were covered +with snow, were shouting like Comanches, and were having an altogether +wild time of it. There was climbing enough to keep us warm, for all +the sub-zero weather, and I was finally allowed to escape to the house +only on the promise that I risk my neck again on the morrow. + + + + +_Friday the Twenty-Fourth_ + + +My Dinkie's secret is no longer a secret. It divulged itself to me +to-day with the suddenness of a thunder-clap. _Peter Ketley has been +back at Alabama Ranch for nearly three weeks._ + +I was out with the kiddies this afternoon, having another wild time on +the toboggan-slide, dressed in an old Mackinaw of Dinky-Dunk's buckled +in close around my waist and a pair of Whinnie's heaviest woolen socks +over my moccasins and a mangy old gray-squirrel cap on by head. The +children looked like cherubs who'd been rolled in a flour-barrel, with +their eyes shining and their cheeks glowing like Richmond roses, but I +must have looked like something that had been put out to frighten the +coyotes away. At any rate, there we were, all squealing like pigs and +all powdered from tip to toe with the dry snow and all looking like +Piutes on the war-path. And who should walk calmly about the corner of +the buildings but Peter himself! + +My heart stopped beating and I had to lean against the end of the +toboggan-slide until I could catch my breath. + +He called out, "Hello, youngsters!" as quietly as though he had seen +us all the day before. I said "Peter!" in a strangled sort of whisper, +and wondered what made my knees wabble as I stood staring at him as +though he had been a ghost. + +But Peter was no ghost. He was there before me, in the body, still +smoking his foolish little pipe, wearing the familiar old coonskin cap +and coat that looked as though the moths had made many a Roman holiday +of their generously deforested pelt. He took the pipe out of his mouth +as he stepped over to me, and pulled off his heavy old gauntlet before +he shook hands. + +"Peter!" I repeated in my ridiculous small whisper. + +He didn't speak. But he smiled, a bit wistfully, as he stared down at +me. And for just a moment, I think, an odd look of longing came into +his searching honest eyes which studied my face as though he were +counting every freckle and line and eyelash there. He continued to +X-ray me with that hungry stare of his until I took my hand away and +could feel the blood surging back to my face. + +"It's a long time," he said as he puffed hard on his pipe, apparently +to keep it from going out. The sound of his voice sent a little +thrill through my body. I felt as rattle-headed as a rabbit, and was +glad when Dinkie and Poppsy captured him by each knee and hung on like +catamounts. + +"Where did you come from?" I finally asked, trying in vain to be as +collected as Peter himself. + +Then he told me. He told me as nonchalantly as though he were giving +me a piece of news of no particular interest. He had rather a +difficult book to finish up, and he concluded the quietness of Alabama +Ranch would suit him to a T. And when spring came he wanted to have a +look about for a nest of the whooping crane. It has been rather a +rarity, for some sixteen or seventeen years, this whooping crane, and +the American Museum was offering a mighty handsome prize for a +specimen. Then he was compelled to give his attention to Dinkie and +Poppsy, and tried the slide a couple of times, and announced that our +coaster was better than the chariot of Icarius. And by this time I had +recovered my wits and my composure and got some of the snow off my +Mackinaw. + +"Have I changed?" I asked Peter as he turned to study my face for the +second time. + +"To me," he said as he brushed the snow from his gauntlets, "you are +always adorable!" + +"_Verboten!_" I retorted to that, wondering why anything so foolish +could have the power to make my pulses sing. + +"Why?" he asked, as his eyes met mine. + +"For the same old reason," I told him. + +"Reasons," he said, "are like shoes: Time has the trick of wearing +them out." + +"When that happens, we have to get new ones," I reminded him. + +"Then what is the new one?" he asked, with an unexpectedly solemn look +on his face. + +"My husband has just asked me to join him in Calgary," I said, +releasing my bolt. + +"Are you going to?" he asked, with his face a mask. + +"I think I am," I told him. For I could see, now, how Peter's return +had simplified the situation by complicating it. Already he had made +my course plainer to me. I could foresee what this new factor would +imply. I could understand what Peter's presence at Alabama Ranch would +come to mean. And I had to shut my eyes to the prospect. I was still +the same old single-track woman with a clear-cut duty laid out before +her. There were certain luxuries, for the sake of my own soul's peace, +I could never afford. + +"Why are you going back to your husband?" Peter was asking, with real +perplexity on his face. + +"Because he needs me," I said as I stood watching the children go +racing down the slide. + +"Why?" he asked, with what impressed me as his first touch of +harshness. + +"Must I explain?" I inquired with my own first movement in +self-defense, for it had suddenly occurred to me that any such +explaining would be much more difficult than I dreamed. + +"Of course not," said Peter, changing color a little. "It's only that +I'm so tremendously anxious to--to understand." + +"To understand what?" I questioned, both hoping and dreading that he +would go on to the bitter end. + +"That _you_ understand," was his cryptic retort. And for once in his +life Peter disappointed me. + +"I can't afford to," I said with an effort at lightness which seemed +to hurt him more than it ought. Then I realized, as I stood looking up +into his face, that I was doing little to merit that humble and +magnificent loyalty of Peter's. _He_ would play fair to the end. He +was too big of heart to think first of himself. It was _me_ he was +thinking of; it was _me_ he wanted to see happy. But I had my own road +to go, and no outsider could guide me. + +"It's no use, Peter," I said as I put my mittened hand on his +gauntleted arm without quite knowing I was doing it. And I went on to +warn him that he must not confront me with kindness, that I was a good +deal like an Indian's dog which neither looks for kindness nor +understands it. He laughed a trifle bitterly at that and reminded me, +as he stood staring at me, of a Pribilof seal staring into an Arctic +sun. Then he said an odd thing. "I wish I could make it a bit easier +for you," he remarked as impersonally as though he were meditating +aloud. + +I asked him why he said that. He evasively explained that he thought +it was because I had what the Romans called _constantia_. So I asked +him to explain _constantia_. And he said, with a shrug, that we might +regard it as firm consideration of a question before acting on it. I +explained, at that, that it wasn't a matter of choice, but of +character. He was willing to acknowledge that I was right. But before +that altogether unsatisfactory little debate was over Peter made me +promise him one thing. He has made me promise that before I leave we +have a tramp over the prairie together. And we have agreed that Sunday +would be as good a day as any. + + + + +_Saturday the Twenty-Fifth_ + + +I have sent word to Duncan to expect me in Calgary as soon as I can +get things ready. My decision is made. And it is final. Two ghostly +hands have reached out and turned me toward my husband. One is the +Past. The other is the Proprieties. If life out here were a little +more like the diamond-dyed Westerns, Peter Ketley and Duncan McKail +would fight with hammerless Colts, the victor would throw me over the +horn of his saddle, and vanish in a cloud of dust, while Struthers was +turning Casa Grande into a faro-hall and my two kiddies were busy +holding up the Elk Crossing stage-coach. + +But life, alas, isn't so dramatic as we dream it. It cross-hobbles us +and hog-ties us and leaves us afraid of our own wilted impulses. I +have a terror of failure. And it's plain enough I have only one +mission on God's green footstool. I'm a home-maker, and nothing more. +I'm a home-maker confronted by the last chance to make good at my one +and only calling. And whatever it costs, I'm going to make my husband +recognize me as a patient and long-suffering Penelope.... + +But enough of the rue! To-morrow I'm going snow-shoeing with Peter. +I'm praying that the weather will be propitious. I want one of our +sparkling-burgundy days with the sun shining bright and a nip in the +air like a stiletto buried in rose leaves. For it may be the last time +in all my life I shall walk on the prairie with my friend, Peter +Ketley. The page is going to be turned over, the candle snuffed out, +and the singing birds of my freedom silenced. I have met my Rubicon, +and it must be crossed. But last night, for the first time in a month, +I plastered enough cold cream on my nose to make me look like a +buttered muffin, and rubbed enough almond-oil meal on my arms to make +them look like a miller's. And I've been asking myself if I'm the +sedate old lady life has been trying to make me. There are certain +Pacific Islands, Gershom tells me, where the climate is so stable that +the matter of weather is never even mentioned, where the people who +bathe in that eternal calm are never conscious of the conditions +surrounding them. That's the penalty, I suppose, that humanity pays +for constancy. There are no lapses to record, no deviations to be +accounted for, no tempests to send us tingling into the shelters of +wonder. And I can't yet be quite sure whether this rebellious old +heart of mine wants to be a Pacific Islander or not. + + + + +_Monday the Twenty-Seventh_ + + +Peter and I have had our tramp in the snow. It wasn't a sunny day, as +I had hoped. It was one of those intensely cold northern days without +wind or sun, one of those misted days which Balzac somewhere describes +as a beautiful woman born blind. It was fifty-three below zero when we +left the house, with the smoke going up in the gray air as straight +and undisturbed as a pine-tree and the drifts crunching like dry +charcoal under our snow-shoes. We were woolened and mittened and +capped and furred up to the eyes, however, and I was warmer than I've +been many a time on Boston Common in March, even though we did look +like a couple of deep-sea divers and steamed like fire-engines when we +breathed. + +We tramped until we were tired, swung back to Casa Grande, and Peter +came in for a cup of tea and then trudged off to Alabama Ranch again. +And that was the lee and the long of it, as the Irish say. What did we +talk about? Heaven knows what we didn't talk about! Peter told me +about a rancher named Bidwell, north of The Crossing, being found +frozen to death in a snow-drift, frozen stiff, with the horse still +standing and the rider still sitting upright in the saddle. He said +there was a lot of rot talked about the great clean outdoors. The +sentimentalists found that they naturally felt a bit niftier in fresh +air, but the great outdoors, according to Peter, is an arena of +endless murder and rapine and warfare, and the cleanest acre of forest +or prairie under the sun somewhere has its stains of blood and its +record of cruelty. We talked about Susie and the negative phrasing of +the ten moral laws and the Horned Dinosaur from Sand Hill Creek (whose +bones Peter reckoned to be at least three million years old) and the +marriage customs of the Innuits. And we talked about Matzenauer and +Kreisler and the best cure for chilblains and about Gershom and Poppsy +and Dinkie--but most of all about Dinkie. + +Peter asked me if I'd seen Dinkie's school essays on _The Flag_ and +_The Capture of Quebec_, and rather surprised me by handing over +crumpled copies of the same, Dinkie having proudly despatched these +masterpieces all the way to Philadelphia for his "Uncle Peter's" +approval. It hurt me, for just one foolish fraction of a second, to +think my boy had confidences with an outsider which he could not have +with his own mother. And then I remembered that Peter wasn't an +outsider. I realized how much he had brought into my laddie's life, +how much, in a different way, he had brought into my own. I even tried +to tell him about this. But he stopped me short by saying something in +Latin which he later explained meant "by taking the middle course we +shall not go amiss." So I came back to Casa Grande, not exactly with a +feeling of frustration, but with a feeling of possibilities withheld +and issues deferred. It was a companionable enough tramp, I suppose. +But I'm afraid I was a disappointment to Peter. His gaiety impressed +me as a bit forced. I am slightly mystified by his refusal, while +taking serious things seriously, to take anything tragically. Even at +tea, with all its air of the valedictory hanging over us, he was nice +and gay, like the Christmas beeves the city butchers stick paper +rosettes into, or the circus-band playing like mad while the tumbler +who has had a fall is being carried out to the dressing-tent. Peter +even offhandedly inquired, as he was going, if he might have Scotty to +take care of, provided it was not expedient to take Dinkie's dog +along to Calgary with us.... I'm not quite certain--I may be wrong, +but there are moments, odd earthquakey moments, when I have a +suspicion that Peter will be keeping more than Scotty after we've +trekked off to Calgary! + + + + +_Saturday the Fourth_ + + +This tearing up of roots is a much sorrier business than I had +imagined. And more difficult. I find it hard to know what to take and +what to leave behind. And there is so much to be thought of, so much +to be arranged for, so much to be done. I have had to write Duncan and +tell him I'll be a few days later than I intended. My biggest problem +has been with Whinstane Sandy and Struthers. I called them in and had +a talk with them and told them I wanted them to keep Casa Grande going +the same as ever. Then I made myself into the god from the machine by +calmly announcing the only way things could be arranged would be for +the two of them to get married. + +Struthers, at this suggestion, promptly became as coy as a +partridge-hen. Whinnie, of course, remained Scottish and canny. He +became more shrewdly magnanimous, however, after we'd had a bit of +talk by ourselves. "Weel, I'll tak' the woman, rather than see her +frettin' hersel' to death!" he finally conceded, knowing only too +well he'd nest warm and live well for the rest of his days. He'd been +hoping, he confessed to me, that some day he'd get back to that claim +of his up in the Klondike. But he wasn't so young as he once was. And +perhaps Dinkie, when he was grown to a man, could go up and look after +his rights. 'Twould be a grand journey, he averred with a sigh, for a +high-spirited lad turned twenty. + +"I'll be stayin' with Pee-Wee and the old place here," concluded +Whinstane Sandy, giving me his rough old hand as a pledge. And with +tears in my eyes I lifted that faithful old hand up to my lips and +kissed it. Whinnie, I knew, would die for me. But he would pass away +before he'd be willing to put his loyalty and his courage and his +kind-heartedness into pretty speeches. Struthers, on the other hand, +has become too flighty to be of much use to me in my packing. She has +plunged headlong into a riot of baking, has sent for a fresh supply of +sage tea, and is secretly perusing a dog-eared volume which I have +reason to know is _The Marriage Guide_. + +Gershom, all things considered, is the most dolorous member of our +home circle. He says little, but inspects me with the wounded eyes of +a neglected spaniel. He will stay on at Casa Grande until the Easter +holidays, and then migrate to the Teetzels'. As for Dinkie and Poppsy, +they are too young to understand. The thought of change excites them, +but they have no idea of what they are leaving behind. + +Last night, when I was dog-tired after my long day's work, I +remembered about Dinkie's school-essays and took them out to read. And +having done so, I realized there was something sacred about them. They +gave me a glimpse of a groping young soul reaching up toward the +light. + +"We have a Flag," I read, "to thrill our bones and be prod of and no +man boy woman or girl" (and the not altogether artless _diminuendo_ +did not escape me!) "should never let it drag in the dust. It flotes +at the bow of our ships and waves from the top of most post offices +etc. And now we have a flag and a flag staf in front of our school and +on holdays and when every grate man dies we put said flag up at haf +mast.... It is the flag of the rich and the poor, the flag of our +country which all of whose citizens have a right to fly, the hig" +(obviously meant for _high_) "and the low, the rich and the poor. And +we must not only keep our flag but blazen it still further with deeds +nobely done. If ever you have to shed your blood for your country +remeber its for the nobelest flag that flies the same being an emblen +of our native land to which it represens and stands in high esteem by +the whole people of a country." ... God bless his patriotic little +bones! My bairn knew what he was trying to get at, but it's plain he +didn't quite know how to get there. + +But the drama of the Capture of Quebec plainly put him on easier +ground. For here was a story worth the telling. And what could be more +glorious than the death of Wolfe as I see it through my little +Dinkie's eyes? + +For I read: "The french said Wolfe" (_can_ has first been written and +then scratched out and _would_ substituted) "never get up that rivver +but Wolfe fooled them with a trick by running the french flag up on +his shipps so the french pilots without fear padled out and come abord +when Wolfe took them prissoners and made them pilot the english ships +safe to the iland of Orlens. He wanted to capsture the city of Quebec +without distroiting it. But the clifs were to high and the brave +Montcalm dified Wolfe who lost 400 men and got word Amherst could not +come and so himself took sick and went to bed. But a desserter from +the french gave Wolfe the pass word and when his ships crept further +up the rivver in the dark a french senntry called out qui vive and one +of Wolfe's men who spoke french well ansered la france and the senntry +said to himself they was french ships and let them go on. Next day +Wolfe was better and saw a goat clime up the clifs near the plains of +Abraham and said where a goat could go he could go to. So he forgot +being sick and desided to clime up Wolfe's cove which was not then +called that until later. It was a dark night and they went in row +boats with all the oars mufled. It was a formadible sight that would +have made even bolder men shrink with fear. But it was the brave +Higlanders who lead with their muskits straped to their sholdiers +climing up the steep rock by grabbing at roots of trees and shrubbs +and not a word was wispered but the french senntrys saw the tree +moving and asked qui vive again. The same sholdier who once studdied +hard and lernt french said la france as he had done before and they +got safe to the top and faced the city. At brake of day they stood +face to face, french and english. But Montcalm marched out to cut them +off there and Wolfe lined his men up in a line and said hold your fire +until they are within forty paces away from us. The french caused +many causilties but the english never wavered. Montcalm still on horse +back reseaved a mortal wound, he would of fell off if two of his tall +granadeers hadn't held him up and Wolfe too was shot on the wirst but +went right on. Again he was shot this time more fataly and as they +were laying him down one of the men exclaimed See how they run. Who +run murmurred the dieing Wolfe. The enemy sir replied the man. Then I +die happy said Generral Wolfe and with a great sigh rolled over on his +side and died.... And when the doctor told Montcalm he could only live +a few hours he said God be prased I shall not live to see Quebec fall. +Brave words like those should not be forgoten and what Wolfe said was +just as brave. No more fiting words could be said by anybody than +those he said in the boats with the mufled oars that night that the +paths of glory leed but to the grave." ... + +I have folded up the carefully written pages, reverently, remembering +my promise to return them to Peter. But for a while at least I shall +keep them with me. They have set me thinking, reminding me how time +flies. Here is my little boy, grown into an historian, sagely +philosophizing over the tragedies of life. My wee laddie, expressing +himself through the recorded word.... It seems such a short time ago +that he was taking his first stumbling steps along the dim hallways of +language. I have been turning back to the journal I began shortly +after his birth and kept up for so long, the naive journal of a young +mother registering her wonder at the unfolding mysteries of life. It +became less minute and less meticulous, I notice, as the years slipped +past, and after the advent of Poppsy and Pee-Wee the entries seem a +bit hurried and often incoherent. But I have dutifully noted how my +Dinkie first said "Ah goom" for "All gone," just as I have fondly +remarked his persistent use of the reiterative intensive, with careful +citations of his "da-da" and his "choo-choo car," and a "bow-wow" as +applied to any living animal, and "wa-wa" for water, and "me-me" for +milk, and "din-din" for dinner, and going "bye-bye" for going to sleep +on his little "tum-tum." I even solemnly ask, forgetting my Max +Mueller, what lies at the root of this strange reduplicative process. +Then I come to where I have set down for future generations the +momentous fact that my Dinkie first said "let's playtend" for "let's +pretend," and spoke of "nasturtiums" as "excursions," and announced +that he could bark loud enough to make Baby Poppsy's eyes "bug out" +instead of "bulge out." And I come again to where I have +affectionately registered the fact that my son says "set-sun" for +"sunset" and speaks of his "rumpers" instead of his "rompers," and +coins the very appropriate word "downer" to go with its sister word of +"upper" and describes his Mummy as "_wearing_ Daddy's coffee-cup" when +he really meant _using_ Daddy's coffee-cup. + +It all seems very fond and foolish now, just as at one time it all +seemed very big and wonderful. And I remember schooling my Poppsy to +say "Daddy's all sweet" and how her little tongue, stumbling over the +sibilant, converted it into the non-complimentary "Daddy's all feet," +which my Dinky-Dunk so scowlingly resented. And I have even compiled a +list of Dinkie's earliest "howlers," from the time he was first +interested in Adam and Eve and asked to be told about "The Garden of +Sweden" until he later explained one of Poppsy's crying-spells by +announcing she had dug a hole out by the corral and wanted to bring it +into the house. I used to smile a bit skeptically over these +tongue-twists of children, but now I know they are re-born with each +new generation, the same old turns of thought and the same old kinks +of utterance. I don't know why, but there is even a touch of sadness +about the old jokes now. The patina of time gathers upon them and +mellows them and makes me realize they belong to the past--the past +with its pain and its joy, that can never come back to mortal mothers +again. + + + + +_Monday the Thirtieth_ + + +"We die a little, when we go away." How true it is! By to-morrow we +will be gone. My heart is heavy as lead. I go about, doing things for +the last time, looking at things for the last time, and pretending to +be as matter-of-fact as a tripper breaking camp. But there's a +laryngitis lump in my throat and there are times when I'm glad I'm +almost too busy to think. + +I was hoping that the weather would be bad, as it ought to at this +time of the year, so that I might leave my prairie with some lessened +pang of regret. But the last two days have been miraculously mild. A +Chinook has been blowing, the sky has been a palpitating soft dome of +azure, and a winey smell of spring has crept over the earth.... +To-night, knowing it was the last night, I crept out to say good-by to +my little Pee-Wee asleep in his lonely little bed. It was a perfect +night. The Lights were playing low in the north, weaving together in a +tangle of green and ruby and amethyst. The prairie was very still. +The moonlight lay on everything, thick and golden and soft with +mystery. I knelt beside Pee-Wee's grave, not in bitterness, but bathed +in peace. I knelt there and prayed. + +It frightened me a little, when I looked up, to see Peter standing +beside the little white fence. I thought, at first, that he was a +ghost, he stood so still and he seemed so tall in the moonlight. + +"I'll watch your boy," he said very quietly, "until you come back." + +He made me think of the Old Priest in _The Sorrowful Inheritance_. He +seemed so calmly benignant, so dependable, so safe in his simple +other-worldliness. + +"Oh, Peter!" was all I could say as I moved toward him in the +moonlight. He nodded, as much to himself as to me, as he took my hand +in his. I felt a great ache, which was not really an ache, and a new +kind of longing which never before, in all my life, I had nursed or +known. I must have moved closer to Peter, though I could feel his hand +pull itself away from mine. It made me feel terribly alone in the +world. + +"Aren't you going to kiss me good-by?" I cried out, with my hand on +his shoulder. + +Peter shook his head from side to side, very slowly. + +"_Verboten!_" he said as he put his hand over the hand which I had put +on his shoulder. + +"But I may never come back. Peter!" I whispered, feeling the tears go +slowly down my wet cheek. + +Peter took my unsteady fingers and placed them on the white pickets of +the little rectangular fence. + +"You'll come back," he said very quietly. And when I looked up he had +turned away. + +I could see him walking off in the yellow moonlight with his shoulders +back and his head up. He walked slowly, with an odd wading movement, +like a man walking through water. I was tempted, for a moment, to call +after him. But some power that was not of me or any part of me +prompted me to silence. I stood watching him until he seemed a moving +shadow along the level floor of the world flooded with +primrose-yellow, until he became a shifting stroke of umber on a +background of misty gold. I stood looking after him as he passed away, +out of my sight, and far, far off to the north a coyote howled and +over Casa Grande I could see a thin pennon of chimney-smoke going up +toward Arcturus.... Good-by, Peter, and God bless you.... + +Unlimited, indeed, is the power of Eros. For when I went to slip +quietly into the house, I found Whinnie and Struthers seated together +beside the kitchen range. And Struthers was reading _Tam O'Shanter_ +aloud to her laird. + +"Read slow, noo, lassie, an' tak' it a' in," said the placidly +triumphant voice of Whinstane Sandy, "for it'll be lang before ye ken +its like!" + + + + +_Thursday the Seventeenth_ + + +The migration has been effected ... I am alone in my room, I have two +and three-quarters trunks unpacked, and I feel like a President's wife +the night after Inauguration. It is well past midnight, but I am too +tired and too unsettled to sleep. Things turn out so differently to +what one expects! And all change, to the home-staying heart, can be so +abysmally upsetting!... + +We were a somewhat disheveled and intimidated flock when we emerged +from our train and found Duncan awaiting us with an amazingly big +touring-car which, as he explained with a short laugh at my gape of +wonder, the Barcona Mines would pay for in a week. + +"It's no piker you're pulling with now," he exclaimed as we climbed +stiff and awkward into that deep-upholstered grandeur on wheels. He +said that the children had grown but would have to be togged out with +some new duds--little knowing how I had stayed up until long past +midnight mending and pressing and doing my best to make my bucolic +offspring presentable. And he told me it was _some_ city I had come +to, as I'd very soon see for myself. And it was _some_ shack he'd +corralled for his family, he added with a chuckle of pride. + +I tried to be interested in the skyscrapers he showed me along Eighth +Avenue, and the Palliser, and the concreted subway, and the Rockies, +in the distance, with the wine-glow on their snow-clad peaks. And +while I did my best to shake off the Maud-Muller feeling which was +creeping over me, by studying the tranquillizingly remote +mountain-tops, Duncan confided to me that he had first said: "Fifty +thousand or bu'st!" But two months ago he had amended that to "A +hundred thousand or bu'st!" and now he had his reasons for saying, +with his jaw set: "Just a cool quarter of a million, before I quit +this game!" + +It was for us, I told myself as I looked down at my kiddies, that the +Dour Man behind the big mahogany wheel was fighting. This, I felt, +should bring me happiness, and a new sense of security. And it was +only because my stomach was empty, I tried to assure myself, that my +poor old prairie heart felt that way. I should have been happy, for I +was going to a brand-new home--and it was one of those foot-hill late +afternoons that make you think of the same old razor-blade muffled up +in the same old panne-velvet, an evening of softness shot through with +a steely sharpness. There was a Chinook arch of Irish point-lace still +in the sky, very much like the one I had left behind me, and the sky +itself was a canopy of robin-egg blue _crepe de chine_ hemmed with +salmon pink. + +But as we whirled up out of the city into the higher ground of some +boulevarded and terraced residential district the evening air seemed +colder and the solemn old Rockies toward the west took on an air of +lonesomeness. It made the thought of home and open fires and quiet +rooms very welcome. The lights came out along the asphalted streets, +spangling the slopes of that sedate new suburb with rectangular lines +of brilliants. Duncan, in answer to the questions of the children, +explained that he was taking the longer way round, so as to give us +the best view of the house as we drove in. + +"Here we are!" he exulted as we slowed down and turned into a crescent +lined with baby poplar and Manitoba maple. + +I leaned out and saw a big new house of tapestry brick, looking oddly +palatial on its imposing slope of rising ground. My husband stopped, +in fact, midway in a foolishly pillared gate that bisected a long +array of cobble-stone walls, so that we might get a look at the +gardens. They seemed very new gardens, but much of their newness was +lost in that mercifully subduing light in which I saw trim-painted +trellises and sepulchral white flower-urns and pergolas not yet +softened with creepers. There was also a large iron fountain, painted +white, which Duncan apparently liked very much, from the way he looked +at it. From two of the chimneys I could see smoke going up in the +quiet air. In the windows I could see lights, rose-shaded and warm, +and beyond the shrubbery somewhere back in the garden a workman was +driving nails. His hammer fell and echoed like a series of +rifle-shots. From the garage chimney, too, came smoke, and it was +plain from the sounds that somebody inside was busy tuning up a +car-engine. + +I sat staring at the grounds, at the cobble-stone walls, at the +tapestry-brick house with the high-shouldered French cornices. It +began to creep over me how it meant service, how it meant protection, +how it meant guarded lives for me and mine, how it stood an amazingly +complicated piece of machinery which took much thought to organize and +much money to maintain. And the mainspring behind it all, I +remembered, was the man sitting at the mahogany wheel so close to me. +Light and warmth and comfort and safety--they were all to come from +the conceiting and the struggling of my Dour Man, fighting for an +empty-headed family who were scarcely worth it. He was, after all, the +stoker down in the hole, and without him everything would stop. So +when I saw that he was studying my face with that intent sidelong +glance of his, I reached over and put my hand on his knee, as I had +done so often, in the old days. + +He looked down, at that, with what was almost an appearance of +embarrassment. + +"I want to play my part," I said with all the earnestness of my +earnest old heart, as he let in his clutch and we started up the +winding drive. + +"It ought to be a considerable part," he said as we drew up under a +bone-white porte-cochere where a small-bodied Jap stood respectfully +impassive and waiting to open the door for us. + +My husband got down out of the car. I sat wondering why I should feel +so much like a Lady Jane Grey approaching the headsman's _makura_. + +"Come on, kids!" Duncan called out with a parade of joviality, like a +cheer-leader who realized that things weren't going just right. For +Dinkie, I could see, was shrinking back in the padded seat. His +underlip was trembling a trifle as he sat staring at the strange new +house. But Poppsy, true little woman that she was, smiled +appreciatively about at the material grandeurs which confronted her. +If she'd had a tail, I'm sure, she'd have been wagging it. And this so +tickled her dad that he lifted her out of the car and carried her +bodily and triumphantly up the steps. + +I waited for Dinkie, whose eye met mine. I did my best to show my +teeth, that he might understand how everything was eventually to be +for the best. But his face was still clouded as we climbed the steps +and passed under the yoke. + +The little Jap, whose name, I have since found out, is Tokudo, bowed a +jack-knife bow and said "_Irashai_" as I passed him. And "_Irashai_" I +have also discovered, is perfectly good Japanese for "Welcome." + +We had dinner at seven. It was a well-ordered meal, but it went off +rather dismally. I was depressed, for reasons I couldn't quite fathom, +and the children were tired, and Duncan, I'm afraid, was a bit +disappointed in us all. Tokudo had brought cocktails for us, and +Duncan, seeing I wasn't drinking mine, stowed both away in his +honorable stomach. He ate heartily, I noticed, and gave scant +appearance of a man pining away with a broken heart. After dinner he +sat back and bit off the end of a cigar. + +"This is my idea of living," he proclaimed as he sent a blue cloud up +toward the rather awful dome-light above the big table. "There's stir +and movement here, all day long. Something more than sunsets to look +at! You'll see--something to fill up your day! Why, night seems to +come before I even know it. And before I'm out of bed I'm brooding +over what's ahead of me for that particular date and day--Say, that +girl of ours is falling asleep in her chair there!" + +So I escaped and put the children to bed. And while thus engaged I +discovered that some of Duncan's new friends were dropping in on him. +I wanted to stay up-stairs, for my head was aching a lot and my heart +just a little, but Duncan called to me from the bottom of the stairs. +So down I went, like a dutiful wife, to the room full of smoke and +talk, where two big men and one very thin woman in a baby-bear motor +coat were drinking Scotch highballs with my lord and master. They were +genial and jolly enough, but I couldn't understand their allusions and +I couldn't see the points to their jokes. And they seemed to stay an +interminable length of time. I was secretly uncomfortable, until they +went, but I became still more uncomfortable after they had gone. + +For as we sat there together, in that oppressive big room, I made +rather an awful discovery. I found that my husband and I had scarcely +anything we could talk about together. So I sat there, like an +alligator in a bayou, wondering why his rather flushed face should be +turned toward me every now and then. + +My heart beat a little faster as I saw him take out his watch and wind +it up. + +"Let's go to bed," he said as he pushed it back in his waistcoat +pocket. My heart stopped beating altogether, for a moment or two. I +felt like a slave-girl in a sheik's tent, like a desert-woman just +sold into bondage. + +It was the smoky air and the highballs, I suppose, which left his eyes +a little bloodshot as he turned slowly about and studied my face. Then +he repeated what he had said before. + +"_I can't!_" I told him, with a foolish surge of terror. + +He sat quite a long time without speaking. I could see the corners of +the Holbein-Astronomer mouth go down. + +"As you say," he finally remarked, with a grim sort of quietness. But +every bit of color had gone from his face. I was glad when Tokudo came +in to take away the glasses. + +Duncan stood up, after the servant had gone again, and bowed to me +very solemnly. + +"_Oyasumi nasi_," he said with a stabilizing ironic smile. + +"What does that mean?" I asked, doing my best to smile back at him. + +"That means 'sleep well,'" explained my husband. "But Tokudo would +probably translate it into 'Condescend to enjoy honorable +tranquillity.'" + +Instead of enjoying honorable tranquillity, however, I am sitting up +into the wee sma' hours of the night, patrolling the gloomy ramparts +of my soul's unrest. + + + + +_Wednesday the Twenty-Third_ + + +This change to the city means a new life to my children. But I can +also see it means new dangers and new influences. The simplicity of +ranch life has vanished. And Dinkie and Poppsy are already getting +acquainted with their neighbors. A Ford truck came within an inch of +running over Poppsy this morning. She has announced a curiosity to +investigate ice-cream sodas, and Dinkie has proclaimed his intention +of going to the movies Saturday afternoon with Benny McArthur, the +banker's son in the next block. On Monday I'm to take my children to +school. "One of the finest school-buildings in all the West," Duncan +has proudly explained. I can't help thinking of Gershom and his little +cubby-hole of a wooden building where he is even now so solemnly and +yet so kind-heartedly teaching the three R's to a gathering of little +prairie outlaws. + +I shall have time on my hands, I see, for Hilton and his wife, our +English gardener-chauffeur and our portly maid-of-all-work, pretty +well cover what the wonderful Tokudo overlooks. And Tokudo _is_ a +wonder. That cat-footed little Jap does the ordering and cooking and +serving; he answers the door and the telephone; he attends to the rugs +and the hardwood floors; he rules over the butler's pantry and +polishes the silver and inspects the linen, and even keeps the keys to +Duncan's carefully guarded wine-cellar, which the mistress of the +house herself has not yet dared to invade. + +My husband seems to be very busy with his coal-mines and his other +interests. He said last night that his idea of happiness is to be so +immersed in his work as to be unconscious of time and undisturbed by +its passing. And he _has_ been happy, in that way. But Time, that +patient remodeler of all things mortal, can still work while we sleep. +And something has been happening, without Duncan quite knowing it. He +has changed. He is older, for one thing. I don't mean that my husband +is an old man. But I can see a number of early-autumnal alterations in +him. He's a trifle heavier and stiffer. He's lost a bit of his +springiness. And he seems to know it, in his secret heart of hearts, +for he tries to make up for that loss with a sort of coerced +blitheness which doesn't always carry. He affects a sort of creaking +jauntiness which sometimes falls short of its aim. When he can't +clear the hurdle, I notice, he has the habit of whipping up his tired +spirits with a cocktail or a highball or a silver-fizz. But he is +preoccupied, at times. And at other times he is disturbingly +short-tempered. He announced this morning, almost gruffly, that we'd +had about enough of this "Dinkie and Poppsy business," and the +children might as well be called by their real names. So I shall make +another effort to get back to "Elmer" and "Pauline Augusta." But I +feel, in my bones, that those pompous appellatives will not be always +remembered. It has just occurred to me that my old habit of calling my +husband "Dinky-Dunk" has slipped away from me. Endearing diminutives, +I suppose, are not elicited by polar bears. + + + + +_Thursday the Thirty-First_ + + +I don't quite know what's the matter with me. I'm like a cat in a +strange garret. I don't seem to be fitting in. I sat at the piano last +night playing "What's this dull town to me, Robin Adair?" And Duncan, +with the fit and natural spirit of the home-booster, actively resented +that oblique disparagement of his new business-center. He believes +implicitly in Calgary and its future. + +As for myself, I am rigidly suspending all judgments. I'm at least +trying to play my part, even though my spirit isn't in it. There are +times when I'm tempted to feel that a foot-hill city of this size is +neither fish nor fowl. It impresses me as a frontier cow-town grown +out of its knickers and still ungainly in its first long trousers. But +I can't help being struck by people's incorruptible pride in their own +community. It's a sort of religious faith, a fixed belief in the +future, a stubborn optimism that is surely something more than +self-interest. It's the Dutch courage that makes deprivation and long +waiting endurable. + +It's the women, and the women alone, who seem left out of the +procession. They impress me as having no big interests of their own, +so they are compelled to _playtend_ with make-believe interests. They +race like mad in the social squirrel-cage, or drug themselves with +bridge and golf and the country club, or take to culture with a +capital C and read papers culled from the Encyclopedias; or spend +their husbands' money on year-old Paris gowns and make love to other +women's mates. The altitude, I imagine, has quite a little to do with +the febrile pace of things here. Or perhaps it's merely because I'm an +old frump from a back-township ranch! + +But I have no intention of trying to keep up with them, for I have a +constitutional liking for quietness in my old age. And I can't engross +myself in their social aspirations, for I've seen a bit too much of +the world to be greatly taken with the internecine jealousies of a +twenty-year-old foot-hill town. My "day" in this aristocratic section +is Thursday, and Tokudo this afternoon admitted callers from seven +closed cars, two landaulets, three Detroit electrics and one hired +taxi. I know, because I counted 'em. The children and I posed like a +Raeburn group and did our best to be respectable, for Duncan's sake. +But he seems to have taken up with some queer people here, people who +drop in at any time of the evening and smoke and drink and solemnly +discuss how a shandygaff should be mixed and tell stories I wouldn't +care to have the children hear. + +There's one couple Duncan asked me to be especially nice to, a Mr. and +Mrs. Murchison. The latter, I find, is usually addressed as "Slinkie" +by her friends, and the former is known as "Cattalo Charley" because +he once formed a joint-stock company which was to make a fortune +interbreeding buffalo and range-cattle, the product of that happy +union being known, I believe, as "cattalo." Duncan calls him a +"promoter," but my earlier impression of him as a born gambler has +been confirmed by the report that he's interested in a lignite +briquetting company, that he's fathering a scheme, not only to raise +stock-yard reindeer in the sub-Arctics but also to grow karakule sheep +in the valleylands of the Coast, that he once sold mummy wheat at +forty dollars a bushel, and that in the old boom days he promoted no +less than three oil companies. And the time will come, Duncan avers, +when that man will be a millionaire. + +As for "Slinkie," his wife, I can't be quite sure whether I like her +or not. I at least admire her audacity and her steel-trap quickness of +mind. She has a dead white skin, green eyes, and most wonderful hair, +hair the color of a well-polished copper samovar. She is an extremely +thin woman who affects sheathe skirts and rather reminds me of a +boa-constrictor. She always reeks of _Apres londre_ and uses a +lip-stick as freely before the world as an orchestra conductor uses a +baton or a street-sweeper a broom. She is nervous and sharp-tongued +and fearless and I thought, at first, that she was making a dead set +at my Duncan. But I can now see how she confronts all men with that +same dangerous note of intimacy. Her real name is Lois. She talks +about her convent days in Belgium, sings _risque_ songs in very bad +French, and smokes and drinks a great deal more than is good for her. +In Vancouver, when informed that she was waiting for a street-car on a +non-stop corner, she sat down between the tracks, with her back to the +approaching car. The motorman, of course, had to come to a +stop--whereupon she arose with dignity and stepped aboard. Duncan has +told me this story twice, and tends to consider Lois a really +wonderful character. I am a little afraid of her. She asked me the +other day how I liked Calgary. I responded, according to Hoyle, that +I liked the clear air and the clean streets and the Rockies looking so +companionably down over one's shoulder. Lois hooted as she tapped a +cigarette end against her hennaed thumb-nail. + +"Just wait until the sand-storms, my dear!" she said as she struck a +match on her slipper-heel. + + + + +_Saturday the Second_ + + +My old friend Gershom has very slyly written a _rondeau_ to me. I have +just found it enclosed in my _Golden Treasury_, which he handed back +to me that last night at Casa Grande. It's the first actual _rondeau_ +I ever had indited to my humble self, and while I'm a bit set up about +it, I can't quite detach from Gershom's lines a vaguely obituarial +atmosphere which tends to depress me. + +I can see that it may not be the best _rondeau_ in the world, but I'm +going to keep it until my bones are dust, for good old Gershom's sake. +And some day, when he marries the nice girl he deserves to marry, and +has a kiddy or two of his own, I'll shame his gray hairs by parading +it before his offspring! I have just been re-reading the lines, in +Gershom's copperplate script. They are as follows: + + _To C. McK._ + + _On Returning Her Copy of the Golden Treasury_ + + This golden book, dear friend, wherein each line + Holds close a charm for knowing eyes to meet, + Holds doubly mystical and doubly sweet + An inner charm no language may define: + + For o'er each page a woman's soul divine + Bent low a space for kindred souls to greet, + And here her eyes were lit with gladness fleet + Because of songs that graced with rare design + This book of thine! + + And now I give back into Beauty's hand + Her borrowed songs, but I shall hold always + Secret and safe from every care's demand, + A flame of light to fill my emptier days, + That quieter fellowship, which made a shrine + This book of thine! + G. B. + + + + +_Tuesday the Fifth_ + + +The weather is balmier, and just a tinge of green is creeping into the +tan of the foot-hill slopes. Spring is coming again. + +I went shopping in the Hudson Bay Store yesterday and found it much +more metropolitan than I had expected. And I find I am three whole +laps behind in that steeplechase known as Style. But I got a raft of +things for Pauline Augusta, and a Boy Scout outfit for my laddie. + +One of the few women I like in Calgary is Dinkie's--I mean +Elmer's--new school-teacher. Her name is Lossie Brown and she is an +earnest-eyed girl who's saving up to go to Europe some day and study +art. She's a trifle shy, and unmistakably moody, but her mind is as +bright as a new pin. And some bright morning, when the rose of +womanhood has really opened, she's going to wake up a howling beauty. +I love her, too, for the interest she has taken in my boy, whom she +reports as getting along much better than she had expected. So I have +asked her to write a little note to Gershom Binks, advising him of +his ex-pupil's advance. For Lossie is a girl I'd like Gershom to know. +And she has done this for me. I ask her over to the house as often as +I can and yesterday I had Dinkie slip a little platinum-banded +fountain-pen, with a card, into the pocket of her rather threadbare +ulster. Duncan, however, is not in the least interested in Lossie. He +despises what he calls insignificant people. + +On my way home from shopping I had Hilton drive me about some of the +less-known parts of the city. And I have been compelled to recast some +of my earlier impressions of Calgary. It is wonderful, in many ways, +and some day, I can see, it will be beautiful, just as Lossie Brown +will some day be beautiful. + +In the first place, it is so happily situated, lying as it does +half-way between the mountains and the plain. And the blue Bow comes +dancing so joyously down from the Rockies and the older city sleeps so +happily in the sunny crook of its valley-arm, while the newer suburbs +seem to boil up and run over the surrounding hills like champagne +bubbling over the rim of a glass. There are raw edges, of course, but +time will eventually attend to these. Now and then, between the +motor-cars, you will see a creaking Red River cart. Next to an +office-building of gray sandstone you're likely to spot what looks +like a squatter's wickyup of rusty galvanized iron. Yesterday, on our +main street where the electric-cars were clanging and the limousines +were throwing their exhaust incense to the gods of the future, I +caught sight of a lonely and motionless figure, isolated in the midst +of a newer world. It was the figure of a Cree squaw, blanketed and +many-wrinkled and unmistakably dirty, blinking at the devil-wagons and +the ceaseless hurry of the white man. And being somewhat Indianized, +as my husband once assured me I was, I could sympathize with that +stolid old lady in the blanket. + +I'm even beginning to find that one can get tired of optimism, +especially when it is being so plainly converted from a psychic +abstraction into a municipal asset. There's a sort of communal +Christian Science in this place which ordains that thought shall not +dwell on such transient evils as drought or black rust or early frost +or hail-storms or money stringencies. And there's a sort of youthful +greediness in people's longing to live all there is of life to live +and to know all there is of life to know. For there is a limit to the +sensations we can digest, just as there is a limit to the meat we can +digest. And out here we have a tendency to bolt more than is good for +us, to bolt it without pausing to get the true taste of it. The women +of this town remind me more and more of mice in an oxygen bell; they +race round and round, drunk with an excitement they can't quite +understand, until they burn up their little lives the same as the mice +burn up their little lungs. + +... I've had a letter from Whinstane Sandy to-day, writing about +seed-wheat and the repairs for the tractor. It seems like a message +from another world. He reports that poor old Scotty is eating again +and no longer mourns day in and day out for his lost master. And Mr. +Ketley has very kindly brought over the liniment for Mudski's +shoulder. ... Whatever I may be, or whatever I may have done, I feel +that I can still cleanse my heart by sacrifice. + + + + +_Friday the Ninth_ + + +One can get out of the habit, apparently, of having children about. My +kiddies, I begin to see, occasionally grate on Duncan. He brought +tears to the eyes of Pauline Augusta yesterday by the way he scolded +her for using a lead-pencil on the living-room woodwork. And the night +before he shouted much strong language at Elmer for breaking a +window-pane in the garage with Benny McArthur's new air-gun. + +Elmer and his father, I'm afraid, have rather grown away from each +other. More than once I've caught Duncan staring at his son and heir +in a puzzled and a slightly frustrated sort of way. And Elmer's soul +promptly becomes _incommunicado_ when his iron-browed pater is in the +neighborhood. + +Duncan is very proud of his grand new house. He is anxious to build a +conservatory out along the southwest wing. But he has asked how long a +conservatory would last with two young mountain-goats gamboling along +its leads.... Lossie, little suspecting the pang she was giving me, +laughingly showed me a manuscript which she found by accident in my +Dinkie's reader. It was a poem, dedicated to "D. O'L." And written in +a stiff little hand I read: + + "Your lips are lined with roses, + Your eyes they shinne like gold + If you call me from the sunlight, + I'll answer from the cold. + But I wonder why, Oh, why, + You stay so far from me? + If you whisper from the prarrie, + I'll call from Calgary." + +"Won't it be wonderful," said Lossie as I sat pondering over those +foolish little lines, "won't it be wonderful, if Dinkie grows up to be +a great poet?" + + + + +_Monday the Eleventh_ + + +Elmer, _alias_ Dinkie, after many days' mourning for his lost Scotty, +is consoling himself, as other men do, with a substitute. Last Friday +he Brought home a flop-eared pup with a drooping tail and an +indefinite ancestry, explaining that he had come into possession of +the aforementioned animal by the duly delivered purchase-price of +thirty-seven cents. + +Remembering Minty and certain matters of the past, I was troubled in +spirit. But I couldn't see why my son shouldn't have an animal to +love. And I have had Hilton fix a little box in one corner of the +garage for Dinkie's new pet, which he has christened Rowdy. + +Rowdy, I now see, is a canine of limited spirit and is not likely to +repeat the offenses of Minty. But Dinkie really loves his new pup, +despite the latter's indubitably democratic ancestry. And I begin to +suspect that my laddie's weakness for mongrels may arise from his +earlier experience with Duncan's blooded bulldog, which he struggled +with for three whole days, fondly and foolishly trying to teach that +stolid animal the art of "pointing." + +On Saturday Dinkie smuggled the verminous Rowdy to the upper +bathroom and gave him a thorough but quite unrelished soaping ... +Dinkie, by the way, is now a "cub" in the Boy Scouts and after +adorning himself in khaki goes off on hikes and takes lessons in +woodcraft. Saturday the Scouts of his school marched behind a real +band and Lossie and I sat in the car waiting for my laddie to appear. +He wiggled one hand, and smiled sheepishly, as he caught sight of us. +But he kept "eyes front" and refused to give any further sign as he +marched bravely on behind that brave music. He is learning the law +of the pack. For some first frail ideas of service are beginning +to incubate in that egoistic little bean of his. And he's suffering, +I suppose, the old contest between the ancestral lust to kill and +the new-born inclination to succor and preserve. That means he may +some day be "a gentleman." And I've a weakness for that old Newman +definition of a gentleman as one who never inflicts pain--"tender +towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful +towards the absurd"--conducting himself toward his enemy as if he +were some day to be his friend. And I also wish there were a few +more of them in this hard old world of ours! + +Speaking of gentlemen, there's a Captain Goodhue here whom I rather +like. Lois Murchison brought us together in the tea-room of the +Palliser. In more ways than one he reminds me of Peter. But Captain +Goodhue is a much older man, and is English, coming from a very +excellent family in Sussex. He's one of those iron-gray ex-Army men +who still believe in a monocle and can be loyal to a queen even though +she wears a basque with darts in it. And he doesn't talk to a woman +with that ragging air of condescension which seems to be peculiar to +western American civilization. He is courteous and thoughtful and +sincere, though I noticed that he winced a trifle when I suddenly +remembered, as he was taking his departure, that the McKails were +living in what must have once been his house. He blinked, like a +well-groomed old eagle, when I reminded him of this. I never dreamed, +of course, that the subject would be painful to him. But it was an +honor, he acknowledged with a bow, to pass his household gods on to a +lady to whom so much had already been given. + +When I asked Lois about it, later on, she rather indifferently +acknowledged that the old gentleman had been making a mess of his +different business ventures. He was much better at golf than getting +in on the ground-floor of a land deal. He was too old fogy, said +Slinkie, to make good in the West. He still kept his head up, but +they'd pretty well picked him to the bones.... Lois, by the way, +describes me as something new in her menagerie and drops in to see me +at the most unexpected moments. Then her tongue goes like a +mower-knife. She is persuaded that I should permanent-wave my hair, +lower my waist-line, and go in for amethysts. "And interest yourself, +my dear, in an outside man or two," she has sagely advised me. "For +husbands, you'll find, always accept you at the other mutt's +valuation!" + +I was tempted to make her open her jade-green eyes, for a moment, by +telling her I was already interested in an outside man or two and that +my lord and master hadn't been much influenced by the extraneous +appreciations. But I'm a little afraid of Slinkie and her serpent's +tongue. And I'm a little afraid of this new circle into which my +Duncan has so laboriously engineered himself. They more and more +impress on my simple old prairie soul that the single-track woman is +the woman who gets most out of life, that there's nothing really +great and nothing really enduring that is not built on loyalty and +truth. Character is Fate, as I once before inscribed in this book of +my life. And I've been sitting up to-night, while the eternal bridge +game is going on below, asking myself if all is well with Chaddie +McKail. Have I, or have I not, conceded too much? Am I turning into +nothing more than a mush of concession? Haven't I been bribed by +comfort, and blinded to a situation which I am now almost afraid to +face? Haven't I been selfishly scheming for the welfare of my children +and endangering all their future and my own by the price I am paying? +Haven't I been crazily manning a rickety old pump, trying to keep +afloat a family hulk whose seams are wide open and whose timbers are +water-logged? And how long can this sort of thing go on? And what will +be the end of it? + +I try to warn myself not to smash my goods to kill a rat, as the +Chinese say. I try to flatter myself that I am not letting +circumstances stampede me into any hasty decision. There's many a +woman, I suppose, with a husband whose legal promise has outlived his +loyalty. But all is not well here about my heart. I know that, by the +way it keeps sending up little trial-balloons, to see which way the +wind is really blowing. + +... And Sunday night Cattalo Charlie went home quite drunk. And our +local member, emboldened by his seventh highball, offhandedly invited +me to accompany him on a little run up to Banff, stabbing me with a +hurt look when I told him I'd see when Duncan could get away from his +work.... + +I wonder if spring is coming to Casa Grande? And at Alabama Ranch? And +are the pussy-willows showing in the slough-ends? And why doesn't +Peter Ketley ever write to me? + + + + +_Saturday the Sixteenth_ + + +Lossie and Gershom, I find, have drifted into the habit of writing to +each other. It is, of course, all purely platonic and pedagogic, +arising out of a common interest in my Dinkie's academic advancement. +But Lossie borrowed Dinkie this morning to have a photograph taken +with him, one copy of which she has very generously promised to send +on to Gershom.... Struthers has sent me a very satisfactory report +from Casa Grande, which I dreamed last night had burned to the ground, +compelling me and my kiddies to live in the old prairie-schooner, +laboriously pulled about the prairie by Tithonus and Calamity Kate. +And when I applied at Peter's door for a handful of meal for my +starving children, he called me worse than a fallen woman and drove me +off into the wilderness. + +Duncan asked me to-day if I'd motor up to the mines with him for the +week-end. I had to tell him that I'd promised to take Elmer and +Pauline Augusta to hear Kathleen Parlow and that it wouldn't seem +quite fair to break my word. Duncan said that I was the best judge of +that. Then he slammed a drawer shut and asked me, in his newer manner, +how long I intended to pull this iceberg stuff. "For I can't see," he +concluded after calling out for Tokudo to bring his hat and coat, +"that I'm getting such a hell of a lot out of this arrangement!" + +I asked him, as quietly as I could, what he expected of me. But I +could feel my heart pounding quick against my ribs. I am not, and +never pretended to be, any stained-glass saint. And there were a few +things I felt it was about time to unload. But Tokudo cat-footed back +with the coat, and I could hear Lossie's clear laugh as she came in +through the front door with the returning Dinkie, and some inner voice +warned me to hold my peace. So Duncan and I merely stood there staring +at each other, for a moment or two, across an abysmal and unbridgeable +gulf of silence. Then he strode out to his car without as much as a +howdy-do to the startled and slightly mystified Lossie. + + + + +_Monday the Eighteenth_ + + +I have just learned that we were blackballed from the Country Club. My +husband, at least, has met with that experience. + +It was Lois who let the cat out of the bag. She wasn't clear on all +the details, but it was that old has-been of a Goodhue who was at the +bottom of it all, according to the lady known as Slinkie. Duncan and +he had clashed, from the first. Then Duncan had bought up his paper, +and compelled him to mortgage his home. It was because of something to +do with the Barcona Mines directorate, Lois thought, that Captain +Goodhue had had Duncan blackballed when he applied for membership in +the Country Club, the Captain being vice-president of the original +holding company. Lois laughed none too pleasantly when she added that +her Charley and my Duncan had joined hands to go after the old man's +scalp. And they had got it. They turned him inside out, before they +got through with him. They took his fore-lock and his teepee and his +last string of wampum. And the old snob, of course, would never +forgive them. + +... They took his fore-lock, and his teepee ... And it was Chaddie +McKail and her bairns who were now housing warm in that captured +teepee! And all this toiling and moiling, on the part of my husband, +all this scheming and intriguing and juggling with figures, had been a +campaign for power, a plotting and working to get even with this +haughty old enemy who could carry his defeat so lightly! To be +blackballed like that, I remembered, was to be proclaimed not a +gentleman. And it must have cut deep. At one time, I suppose, Duncan +would have called his monocled captain out. But men seem to fight +differently nowadays. They fight differently, but no less grimly. And +Duncan, whether it is a virtue or a vice in his make-up, would always +be a fighter.... Yet I have no sense of gratitude to Lois Murchison +for depositing her painful truths in my lap. She warned me, in her +artless soprano, that there wasn't much good in sentimentalizing the +situation. But she has thrown a shadow across the house which I was +trying to make into a home. Without quite knowing it, she has +cheapened her life-mate in my eyes. Without quite intending it, she +has left my own husband more ignominious than he once stood. I was +trying hard to school myself into a respect for his material +successes. I was struggling to excuse a great many things by the +engrossing nature of his work. But the motive behind all his efforts +seemed suddenly a sordid one, in many ways a mean one. + +I keep remembering what Lois said about not sentimentalizing a +situation. But I'm not yet such a mush of concession that I can't tell +black from white. And there's some part of us, some vague but +unescapable part of us, which we must respect, otherwise we have no +right to walk God's good earth.... + +I want to get away, for a day or two, to think things out. I think, +before Duncan gets back to-morrow, I shall take Poppsy and run up to +Banff. I may get my view-point back. And the mountain quietness may do +me good.... + +I keep having that same dull ache of disappointment which came to me +as a girl, after I'd idolized a great man called Meredith and after +I'd almost prayed to a great poet called Browning, on finding that one +was so imperfectly monogamous and that the other philandered and +talked foolishly to women. I had thrust my girlish faith in their +hands, as so often befalls with the young, and they had betrayed +it.... But for the second time since I married, I have been reading +_Modern Love_. And I can almost forgive the Apollo of Box Hill for +that betrayal which he knew nothing about. + + + + +_Thursday the Twenty-Eighth_ + + +This is Thursday the twenty-eighth of April. I want to be sure of +that. For there are very few things I can be sure of now. + +The bottom has fallen out of my world. I sit here, telling myself to +be calm. But it's not easy to sit quiet when you face the very worst +that all life could confront you with. _My Dinkie has run away._ + +My boy has left me, has left his home, has vanished like smoke into +the Unknown. He is gone and I have no trace of him. + +I find it hard to write. Yet I _must_ write, for the mere expression +of what I feel tends to ease the ache. It helps to keep me sane. And +already I realize I was wrong when I wrote "the very worst that all +life could confront you with." For my laddie, after all, is not dead. +He must still be alive. And while there's life, there's hope. + +I got back from Banff yesterday morning about nine, and Hilton was +there with the car to meet me, as I had told him to be. I was anxious +to know at once if everything was all right, but I found it hard to +put a question so personal before that impersonal-eyed Englishman. So +I strove to give my interrogation an air of the casual by offhandedly +inquiring: "How's Rowdy, Hilton?" + +"Dead, ma'am," was his prompt reply. + +This rather took my breath away. + +"Do you mean to say that Rowdy is _dead_?" I insisted, noticing +Poppsy's color change as she listened. + +"Killed, ma'am," said the laconic Hilton. + +"By whom?" I demanded. + +"Mr. Murchison, ma'am," was the answer. + +"How?" I asked, feeling my vague dislike for that particular name +sharpen up to something dangerously like hatred. + +"He always comes up the drive a bit fast-like, ma'am. He hit the pup, +and that was the end of him!" + +"Does Dinkie know?" was my first question, after that. + +"He _saw_ it, ma'am," admitted my car-driver. + +"Saw what?" + +"Saw Mr. Murchison throw the dog over the wall into the brush!" + +"What did he say?" + +"He swore a bit, ma'am, and then laughed," admitted Hilton, after a +pause. + +"Dinkie laughed?" I cried, incredulous. + +"No; Mr. Murchison, ma'am," explained Hilton. + +"What did Dinkie say?" I insisted. And again the man on the +driving-seat remained silent a moment or two. + +"It was what he _did_, ma'am," he finally remarked. + +"What did he do?" I demanded. + +"Ran into the house, ma'am, and snatched the icepick off the kitchen +table. Then he went to the big car like a mad 'un, he did. Pounded +holes in every blessed tire with his pick!" + +"And then what?" I asked, with my heart up in my throat. + +Hilton waited until he had taken a crowded corner before answering. + +"Then he found the dead dog, ma'am, and bathed it, and borrowed the +garden spade from me. Then he took it somewheres back in the ravine +and buried it. I gave him the tool-box off the old roadster, to put +what was left of the pup in." + +"And then?" I prompted, with a quaver in my voice I couldn't control. + +"He met Mr. Murchison coming out and he called him w'at I'd not like +to repeat, ma'am, until Mr. McKail stepped out to see what was wrong, +and interfered." + +"_How_ did he interfere?" was my next question. + +"By taking the lad into the house, ma'am," was my witness's retarded +reply. + +"Then what happened?" I exacted. + +I waited, knowing what was coming, but I dreaded to hear it. + +"He gave him a threshing, ma'am," I heard Hilton's voice saying, far +away, as though it came to me over a long-distance telephone on a wet +night. + +I sat rigid as we mounted American Hill. I sat rigid as we swerved in +through the ridiculous manor-like gate and up the winding drive and in +under the ugly new porte-cochere. I didn't even wait for Poppsy as I +got out of the car. I didn't even speak to Tokudo as he ran mincingly +to take my things. I walked straight to the breakfast-room where I saw +my husband sitting at the end of the oblong white table, stirring a +cup of coffee with a spoon. + +"Where's Dinkie?" I asked, trying to keep my voice low but not quite +succeeding. + +Duncan looked up at me with a coldly meditative eye. + +"Where he usually is at this time of day," he finally answered. + +"Where?" I repeated. + +"At school, of course," admitted my husband as he reached out for a +piece of buttered toast. He was making a pretense at being very +tranquil-minded. But his hand, I noticed, wasn't so steady as it might +have been. + +"Is he all right?" I demanded, with my voice rising in spite of +myself. + +"Considerably better, I imagine, than he has been for some time," was +the deliberate answer from the man with the bloodshot eyes at the end +of the table. + +"What do you mean by that?" I asked. And any one of intelligence, I +suppose, could see I was making that question a challenge. + +"I mean that since you saw him last he's had a damned good whaling," +said Duncan, with his jaw squared, so that he reminded me of a +King-Lud bulldog. + +I paid no attention to Tokudo, who came into the room to repeat that +his master was wanted at the telephone. + +"Do you mean you struck that child?" I demanded, leaning on the table +and looking straight into his eyes, which met mine quite unabashed, +and with an air of mockery about them. + +My husband nodded as he pushed back his chair. + +"He got a good one," he asserted as he rose to his feet and rather +leisurely brushed a crumb or two from his vest-front. He could even +afford to smile as he said it. My expression, I suppose, would have +made any man smile. But there was something maddening in his mockery, +at such a moment. There was something gratuitously cruel in his parade +of unconcern. Yet, oddly enough, as I looked at his slightly blotched +face I couldn't help remembering that that was the face I had once +kissed and held close against my cheek, had _wanted_ to hold against +my cheek. And now I hated it. + +I had to wait and cast about for words of hatred strong enough to +carry the arrows of enmity which nothing could stop me from +delivering. But while I waited Tokudo announced for the third time +that my husband was wanted at the telephone. And a very simple thing +happened. My husband answered his call. + +I saw Duncan turn and walk out of the room. I could hear his steps in +the hallway, loud on the waxed hardwood and low on the rugs. I could +hear his deliberated chest-tones as he talked over the wire, talked +quietly and earnestly, talked me and my hatred out of his head and out +of his world. And I realized, as I sat there at the table-end with my +gloves twisted up under my hands and my heart even more twisted up +under my ribs, that it was all useless, that it was all futile. He was +beyond the reach of my resentment. We were in different worlds, +forevermore. + +I was still sitting there when he looked in at the door, with his hat +and coat on, on his way out. I could feel him there, without directly +seeing him. And I could feel, too, that he wanted to say something. +But I declined to lift my head, and I could hear the door close as he +went out to the waiting car. + +I sat there for a long time, thinking about my Dinkie. Twice I almost +surrendered to the impulse to telephone to Lossie Brown. But I knew it +would be no easy matter to get in touch with her. And in two hours it +would be twelve, and any minute after that my boy would be home again. +I tried to cross-examine Tokudo, but I could get nothing out of that +tight-lipped Jap. I watched the clock. I noticed Hilton, when he got +back, raking blood-stains off the gravel of the driveway. I wandered +about, like a lost turkey-hen, trying to dramatize my meeting with +Dinkie, doing my best to cooper together some incident which might +keep our first minute or two together from being too hard on my poor +kiddie. I heard the twelve o'clock whistles, at last, and then the +Westminster-chimes of the over-ornate clock in the library announce +that noon had come. And still the minutes dragged on. + +And when the tension was becoming almost unbearable I heard a step on +the gravel and my heart started to pound. + +But instead of Dinkie, it was Lossie, Lossie with smiling lips and +inquiring brown eyes and splashes of rose in her cheeks from rapid +walking. + +"Where's Dinkie?" I asked. + +She stopped short, still smiling. + +"That's exactly what I was going to ask?" I heard her saying. Then her +smile faded as she searched my face. "There's--there's nothing +happened, has there?" + +I groped my way to a pillar of the porte-cochere and leaned against +it. + +"Didn't Dinkie come to school this morning?" I asked as the earth +wavered under my feet. + +"No," acknowledged Lossie, still searching my face. And a frown of +perplexity came into her own. + +I knew then what had happened. I knew it even before I went up to +Dinkie's room and started my frantic search through his things. I +could see that a number of his more treasured small possessions were +gone. I delved forlornly about, hoping that he might have left some +hidden message for me. But I could find nothing. I sat looking at his +books and broken toys, at the still open copy of _The Count of Monte +Cristo_ which he must have been poring over only the night before, at +his neatly folded underclothes and the little row of gravel-worn +shoes. They took on an air of pathos, an atmosphere of the memorial. +Yet, oddly enough, it was Lossie, and Lossie alone, who broke into +tears. The more she cried, in fact, the calmer I found myself +becoming, though all the while that dead weight of misery was hanging +like lead from my heart. + +I went at once to the telephone and called up Duncan's office. He was +still there, though I had to wait several minutes before I could get +in touch with him. + +I had thought, at first, that he would be offhandedly skeptical at the +message which I was sending him over the wire, the message that my boy +had run away. He might even be flippantly indifferent, and remind me +that much worse things could have happened. + +But I knew at once that he was genuinely alarmed at the news which I'd +given him. It apparently staggered him for a moment. Then he said in +his curt telephonic chest-tones, "I'll be up at the house, at once." + +He came, before I'd even completed a second and more careful search. +His face was cold and non-committal enough, but his color was gone and +there was a look that was almost one of contrition in his troubled +eyes, which seemed unwilling to meet mine. He questioned Lossie and +cross-examined Hilton and Tokudo, and then called up the Chief of +Police. Then he telephoned to the different railway stations, and +carried Lossie off in the car to the McArthurs', to interview Benny, +and came back an hour later with that vague look of frustration still +on his face. + +He sat down to luncheon, but he ate very little. He was silent for +quite a long time. + +"Your boy's all right," he said in a much softer voice than I had +expected from him. "He's big enough to look after himself. And we'll +be on his trail before nightfall. He can't go far." + +"No; he can't go far," I echoed, trying to fortify myself with the +knowledge that he must have taken little more than a dollar from the +gilded cast-iron elephant which he used as a bank. + +"I don't want this to get in the papers," explained my husband. +"It's--it's all so ridiculous. I've put Kearney and two of his men on +the job. He's a private detective, and he'll keep busy until he gets +the boy back." + +Duncan got up from the table, rather heavily. He stood hesitating a +moment and then stepped closer to my chair. + +"I know it's hard," he said as he put a hand on my shoulder. "But +it'll be all right. We'll get your boy back for you." + +I didn't speak, because I knew that if I spoke I'd break down and make +an idiot of myself. My husband waited, apparently expecting me to say +something. Then he took his hand away. + +"I'll get busy with the car," he said with a forced matter-of-factness, +"and let you know when there's any news. I've wired Buckhorn and sent word +to Casa Grande--and we ought to get some news from there." + +But there was no news. The afternoon dragged away and the house seemed +like a tomb. And at five o'clock I did what I had wanted to do for +six long hours. I sent off a forty-seven word telegram to Peter +Ketley, telling him what had happened.... + +Duncan came back, at seven o'clock, to get one of the new photographs +of Dinkie and Lossie for identification purposes. They had rounded up +a small boy at Morley and Kearney was motoring out to investigate. +We'd know by midnight.... + +It is well after midnight, and Duncan has just had a phone-message +from Morley. The little chap they had rounded up was a Barnado boy +fired with a sudden ambition to join his uncle in the gold-fields of +Australia. Somewhere, in the blackness of this big night, my homeless +Dinkie is wandering unguarded and alone. + + + + +_Friday the Twenty-Ninth_ + + +I have had no word from Peter.... I've had no news to end the ache +that pins me like a spear-head to the wall of hopelessness. Duncan, I +know, is doing all he can. But there is so little to do. And this +world of ours, after all, is such a terrifyingly big one. + + + + +_Saturday the Thirtieth_ + + +I was called to the phone before breakfast this morning and it was the +blessed voice of Peter I heard from the other end of the wire. My +telegram had got out to him from Buckhorn a day late. But he had no +definite news for me. He was quite fixed in his belief, however, that +Dinkie would be bobbing up at his old home in a day or two. + +"The boy will travel this way," he assured me. "He's bound to do that. +It's as natural as water running down-hill!" + +Duncan asked me whom I'd been talking to, and I had to tell him. His +face clouded and the familiar quick look of resentment came into his +eyes. + +"I can't see what that Quaker's got to do with this question," he +barked out. But I held my peace. + + + + +_Sunday the First_ + + +I have found a message from my Dinkie. I came across it this morning, +by accident. It was in my sewing-basket, the basket made of birch-bark +and stained porcupine quills and lined with doe-skin, which I'd once +bought from a Reservation squaw in Buckhorn with a tiny papoose on her +back. Duncan had upbraided me for passing out my last five-dollar bill +to that hungry Nitchie, but the poor woman needed it. + +My fingers were shaking as I unfolded the note. And written there in +the script I knew so well I read: + + "Darligest Mummsey: + + I am going away. But dont worry about me for I will be alright. I + couldn't stay Mummsey after what hapened. Some day I will come + back to you. But I'm not as bad as all that. I'll love you always + as much as ever. I can take care for myself so don't worry, + please. And please feed my two rabits reglar and tell Benny I'll + save his jacknife and rember every day I'm rembering you. X X X X + X X X + + Your aff'cte son, + + DINKIE." + +It seemed like a voice from the dead, it was bittersweet consolation, +and, in a way, it stood redemption of Dinkie himself. I'd been +upbraiding him, in my secret heart of hearts, for his silence to his +mother. That's a streak of his father in him, had been my first +thought, that unthinking cruelty which didn't take count of the +anguish of others. But he hadn't forgotten me. Whatever happens, I +have at least this assuaging secret message from my son. And some day +he'll come back to me. "Ye winna leave me for a', laddie?" I keep +saying, in the language of old Whinstane Sandy. And my mind goes back, +almost six years at a bound, to the time he was lost on the prairie. +That time, I tell myself, God was good to me. And surely He will be +good to me again! + + + + +_Tuesday the Third_ + + +We still have no single word of our laddie.... They all tell me not to +worry. But how can a mother keep from worrying? I had rather an awful +nightmare last night, dreaming that Dinkie was trying to climb the +stone wall about our place. He kept falling back with bleeding +fingers, and he kept calling and calling for his mother. Without being +quite awake I went down to the door in my night-gown, and opened it, +and called out into the darkness: "Is anybody there? Is it you, +Dinkie?" + +My husband came down and led me back to bed, with rather a frightened +look on his face. + +They tell me not to worry, but I've been up in Dinkie's room turning +over his things and wondering if he's dead, or if he's fallen into the +hands of cruel people who would ill-use a child. Or perhaps he has +been stolen by Indians, and will come back to me with a morose and +sullen mind, and with scars on his body.... + + + + +_Thursday the Fifth_ + + +What a terrible thing is loneliness. The floors of Hell, I'm sure, are +paved with lonesome hearts. Day by day I wait and long for my laddie. +Always, at the back of my brain, is that big want. Day by day I brood +about him and night by night I dream of him. I turn over his old +playthings and his books, and my throat gets tight. I stare at the +faded old snap-shots of him, and my heart turns to lead. I imagine I +hear his voice, just outside the door, or just beyond a bend in the +road, and a two-bladed sword of pain pushes slowly through my +breast-bone. Dear old Lossie comes twice a day, and does her best to +cheer me up. And Gershom has offered to give up his school and join in +the search. Peter Ketley, he tells me, has been on the road for a +week, in a car covered with mud and clothes that have never come off. + + + + +_Friday the Sixth_ + + +There is no news of my Dinkie. And _that_, I remind myself, is the +only matter that counts. + +Lois Murchison drove up to-day in her hateful big car. She did not +find me a very agreeable hostess, I'm afraid, but curled up like a +nonchalant green snake in one of my armchairs and started to smoke and +talk. She asked where Duncan was and I had to explain that he'd been +called out to the mines on imperative business. And that started her +going on the mines. Duncan, she said, should clean up half a million +before he was through with that deal. He had been very successful. + +"But don't you feel, my dear," she went on with quiet venom in her +voice, "that a great deal of his success has depended on that +bandy-legged little she-secretary of his?" + +"Is she that wonderful?" I asked, trying to seem less at sea than I +was. + +"She's certainly wonderful to him!" announced the woman known as +Slinkie. And having driven that poisoned dart well into the flesh, +she was content to drop her cigarette-end into the ash-receiver, reach +for her blue-fox furs, and announce that she'd have to be toddling on +to the hair-dresser's. + +Lois Murchison's implication, at that moment, didn't bother me much, +for I had bigger troubles to occupy my thoughts. But the more I dwell +on it, the more I find myself disturbed in spirit. I resent the idea +of being upset by a wicked-tongued woman. She has, however, raised a +ghost which will have to be laid. To-morrow I intend to go down to my +husband's office and see his secretary, "to inspect the whaup," as +Whinnie would express it, for I find myself becoming more and more +interested in her wonderfulness.... Peter sent me a hurried line or +two to-day, telling me to sit tight as he thought he'd have news for +me before the week was out. + +I suspect him of trying to trick me into some forlorn new lease of +hope. But I have pinned my faith to Peter--and I know he would not +trifle with anything so sacred as mother-love. + + + + +_Saturday the Seventh_ + + +There is no news of my Dinkie.... But there is news of another +nature. + +Between ten and eleven this morning I had Hilton motor me down to +Duncan's office in Eighth Avenue. It struck me as odd, at first, that +I had never been there before. But Duncan, I remembered, had never +asked me, the domestic fly, to step into his spider's parlor of +commerce. And I found a ridiculous timidity creeping over me as I went +up in the elevator, and found the door-number, and saw myself +confronted by a cadaverous urchin in horn-rimmed specs, who thrust a +paper-covered novel behind his chair-back and asked me what I wanted. +So I asked him if this was Mr. McKail's office. + +"Sure," he said in the established vernacular of the West. + +"What is your name, little boy?" I inquired, with the sternest brand +of condescension I could command. + +The young monkey drew himself up at that and flushed angrily. "Oh, I +don't know as I'm so little," he observed, regarding me with a +narrowing eye as I stepped unbidden beyond the sacred portals. + +"Where will I find Mr. McKail's secretary?" I asked, noticing the door +in the stained-wood partition with "Private" on its frosted glass. The +youth nodded his head toward the door in question and crossed to a +desk where he proceeded languidly to affix postage-stamps to a small +pile of envelopes. + +I hesitated for a moment, as though there was something epochal in the +air, as though I was making a step which might mean a great deal to +me. And then I stepped over to the door and opened it. + +I saw a young woman seated at a flat-topped desk, with a gold-banded +fountain-pen in her fingers, checking over a column of figures. She +checked carefully on to the end of her column, and then she raised her +head and looked at me. + +Her face stood out with singular distinctness, in the strong +side-light from the office-window. And the woman seated at the +flat-topped desk was Alsina Teeswater. + +I don't know how long I stood there without speaking. But I could see +the color slowly mount and recede on Alsina Teeswater's face. She put +down her fountain-pen, with much deliberation, and sat upright in her +chair, with her barricaded eyes every moment of the time on my face. + +"So this has started again?" I finally said, in little more than a +whisper. + +I could see the girl's lips harden. I could see her fortifying herself +behind an entrenchment of quietly marshaled belligerency. + +"It has never stopped, Mrs. McKail," she said in an equally low voice, +but with the courage of utter desperation. + +It took some time, apparently, for that declaration to filter through +to my brain. Everything seemed suddenly out of focus; and it was hard +to readjust vision to the newer order of things. But I was calmer, +under the circumstances, than I expected to be. + +"I'm glad I understand," I finally admitted. + +The woman at the desk seemed puzzled. Then she looked from me to her +column of figures and from her column of figures to the huddled roofs +and walls of the city and the greening foot-hills and the solemn white +crowns of the Rockies behind them. + +"Are you quite sure, Mrs. McKail, that you do understand?" she asked +at last, with just a touch of challenge in the question. + +"Isn't it quite simple now?" I demanded. + +She found the courage to face me again. + +"I don't think this sort of thing is ever simple," she replied, with +much more emotion than I had expected of her. + +"But it's at least clear how it must end," I found the courage to +point out to her. + +"Is that clear to _you_?" demanded the woman who was stepping into my +shoes. It seemed odd, at the moment, that I should feel vaguely sorry +for her. + +"Perhaps you might make it clearer," I prompted. + +"I'd rather Duncan did that," she replied, using my husband's first +name, obviously, without knowing she had done so. + +"Wouldn't it be fairer--for the two of us--now? Wouldn't it be +cleaner?" I rather tremulously asked of her. + +She nodded and stared down at the sheet covered with small columns of +figures. + +"I don't know whether you know it or not," she said with a studied +sort of quietness, "but last week Mr. McKail began making arrangements +to establish a residence in Nevada. He will have to live there, of +course, for at least six months, perhaps even longer." + +I could feel this sinking in, like water going through +blotting-paper. The woman at the desk must have misinterpreted my +silence, for she was moved to say, in a heavier effort at +self-defense, "He _knew_, of course, that you cared for some one +else." + +I looked at her, as though she were a thousand miles away. I stood +there impressed by the utter inadequacy of speech. And the thing that +puzzled me was that there was an air of honesty about the woman. She +still so desperately clung to her self-respect that she wanted me to +understand both her predicament and her motives. I could hear her +explaining that my husband had no intention of going to Reno, but +would live in Virginia City, where he was taking up some actual mining +interests. Such things were not pleasant, of course. But this one +could be put through without difficulty. Mr. McKail had been assured +of that. + +I tried to pull myself together, wondering why I should so suddenly +feel like a marked woman, a pariah of the prairies, as friendless and +alone as a leper. Then I thought of my children. And that cleared my +head, like a wind sweeping clean a smoky room. + +"But a case has to be made out," I began. "It would have to be proved +that I----" + +"There will be no difficulty on that point, Mrs. McKail," went on the +other woman as I came to a stop. "Provided the suit is not opposed." + +The significance of that quietly uttered phrase did not escape me. Our +glances met and locked. + +"There are the children," I reminded her. And she looked a very +commercialized young lady as she sat confronting me across her many +columns of figures. + +"There should be no difficulty there--_provided_ the suit is not +opposed," she repeated with the air of a physician confronted by a +hypochondriacal patient. + +"The children are mine," I rather foolishly proclaimed, with my first +touch of passion. + +"The children are yours," she admitted. And about her hung an air of +authority, of cool reserve, which I couldn't help resenting. + +"That is very generous of you," I admitted, not without ironic +intent. + +She smiled rather sadly as she sat looking at me. + +"It's something that doesn't rest with either of us," she said with +the suspicion of a quaver in her voice. And _she_, I suddenly +remembered, might some day sit eating her pot of honey on a grave. I +realized, too, that very little was to be gained by prolonging that +strangest of interviews. I wanted quietude in which to think things +over. I wanted to go back to my cell like a prisoner and brood over my +sentence.... + +And I have thought things over. I at last see the light. From this day +forward there shall be no vacillating. I am going back to Casa +Grande. + +I have always hated this house; I have always hated everything about +the place, without having the courage to admit it. I have done my +part, I have made my effort, and it was a wasted effort. I wasn't even +given a chance. And now I shall gather my things together and go back +to my home, to the only home that remains to me. I shall still have my +kiddies. I shall have my Poppsy and--But sharp as an arrow-head the +memory of my lost boy strikes into my heart. My Dinkie is gone. I no +longer have him to make what is left of my life endurable.... + +It is raining to-night, I notice, steadily and dismally. It is a dark +night, outside, for lost children.... + +Duncan has just come home, wet and muddy, and gone up to his room. The +gray-faced solemnity with which he strode past me makes me feel sure +that he has been conversing with his lady-love. But what difference +does it make? What difference does _anything_ make? In the matter of +women, I have just remembered, what may be one man's meat is another +man's poison. But I can't understand these reversible people, like +house-rugs, who can pretend to love two ways at once.... I only know +one man, in all the wide world, who has not shattered my faith in his +kind. He is one of those neck-or-nothing men who never change. + +There are many ranchers, out in this country, who keep what they call +a blizzard-line. It's a rope that stretches in winter from their +house-door to their shed or their stable, a rope that keeps them from +getting lost when a blizzard is raging. Peter, I know, has been my +blizzard-line. And in some way, please God, he will yet lead me back +to warmth. He is himself out there in the cold, accepting it, all the +time, with the same quiet fortitude that a Polar bear might. But he +will thole through, in the end. For with all his roughness he can be +unexpectedly adroit. Whinstane Sandy once told me something he had +learned about Polar bears in his old Yukon days: with all their +heaviness, they can go where a dog daren't venture. If need be, they +can flatten out and slide over a sheet of ice too thin to support a +running dog. And the drift-ice may be widening, but I refuse to give +up my hope of hope. "Let the mother go," as the Good Book says, "that +it may be well with thee!" ... + +I have just remembered that I tried to shoot my husband once. He may +make use of _that_, when he gets down to Virginia City. It might, in +fact, help things along very materially. And Susie's eyes will +probably pop out, when she reads it in a San Francisco paper.... + +I've thought of so many clever things I should have said to Alsina +Teeswater. As I look back, I find it was the other lady who did about +all the talking. There were old ulcerations to be cleared away, of +course, and I let her talk about the same as you let a dentist work +with his fingers in your mouth.... But now I must go up and make sure +my Poppsy is safely tucked in. I have just opened the door and looked +out. It is storming wretchedly. God pity any little boys who are +abroad on such a night! + + + + +_Two Hours Later_ + + +It is well past midnight. But there is no sleep this night for Chaddie +McKail. I am too happy to sleep. I am too happy to act sane. For my +boy is safe. _Peter has found my Dinkie!_ + +I was called to the telephone, a little after eleven, but couldn't +hear well on the up-stairs extension, so I went to the instrument +down-stairs, where the operator told me it was long-distance, from +Buckhorn. So I listened, with my heart in my mouth. But all I could +get was a buzz and crackle and an occasional ghostly word. It was the +storm, I suppose. Then I heard Peter's voice, thin and faint and far +away, but most unmistakably Peter's voice. + +"Can you hear me now?" he said, like a man speaking from the bottom of +the sea. + +"Yes," I called back. "What is it?" + +"Get ready for good news," said that thin but valorous voice that +seemed to be speaking from the tip-top mountains of Mars. But the +crackling and burring cut us off again. Then something must have +happened to the line, or we must have been switched to a better +circuit. For, the next moment, Peter's voice seemed almost in the next +room. It seemed to come closer at a bound, like a shore-line when you +look at it through a telescope. + +"Is that any better?" he asked through his miles and miles of +rain-swept blackness. + +"Yes, I can hear you plainly now," I told him. + +"Ah, yes, that _is_ better," he acknowledged. "And everything else is, +too, my dear. For I've found your Dinkie and----" + +"You've found Dinkie?" I gasped. + +"I have, thank God. And he's safe and sound!" + +"Where?" I demanded. + +"Fast asleep at Alabama Ranch." + +"Is he all right?" + +"As fit as a fiddle--all he wants is sleep." + +"_Oh, Peter!_" It was foolish. But it was all I could say for a full +minute. For my boy was alive, and safe. My laddie had been found by +Peter--by good old Peter, who never, in the time of need, was known to +fail me. + +"Where are you now?" I asked, when reason was once more on her +throne. + +"At Buckhorn," answered Peter. + +"And you went all that way through the mud and rain, just to tell me?" +I said. + +"I had to, or I'd blow up!" acknowledged Peter. "And now I'd like to +know what you want me to do." + +"I want you to come and get me, Peter," I said slowly and distinctly +over the wire. + +There was a silence of several seconds. + +"Do you understand what that means?" he finally demanded. His voice, I +noticed, had become suddenly solemn. + +"Yes, Peter, I understand," I told him. "Please come and get me!" And +again the silence was so prolonged that I had to cut in and ask: "Are +you there?" + +And Peter's voice answered "Yes." + +"Then you'll come?" I exacted, determined to burn all my bridges +behind me. + +"I'll be there on Monday," said Peter, with quiet decision. "I'll be +there with Tithonus and Tumble-Weed and the old prairie-schooner. And +we'll all trek home together!" + +"_Skookum!_" I said with altogether unbecoming levity. + +I patted the telephone instrument as I hung up the receiver. Then I +sat staring at it in a brown study. + +Then I went careening up-stairs and woke Poppsy out of a sound sleep +and hugged her until her bones were ready to crack and told her that +our Dinkie had been found again. And Poppsy, not being quite able to +get it through her sleepy little head, promptly began to bawl. But +there was little to bawl over, once she was thoroughly awake. And then +I went careening down to the telephone again, and called up Lossie's +boarding-house, and had her landlady root the poor girl out of bed, +and heard _her_ break down and have a little cry when I told her our +Dinkie had been found. And the first thing she asked me, when she was +able to talk again, was if Gershom Binks had been told of the good +news. And I had to acknowledge that I hadn't even _thought_ of poor +old Gershom, but that Peter Ketley would surely have passed the good +word on to Casa Grande, for Peter always seemed to think of the right +thing. + +And then I remembered about Duncan. For Duncan, whatever he may have +been, was still the boy's father. And he must be told. It was my duty +to tell him. So once more I climbed the stairs, but this time more +slowly. I had to wait a full minute before I found the courage, I +don't know why, to knock on Duncan's bedroom door. + +I knocked twice before any answer came. + +"What is it?" asked the familiar sleepy _bass_--and I realized what +gulfs yawned between us when my husband on one side of that closed +door could be lying lost in slumber and I on the other side of it +could find life doing such unparalleled things to me. I felt for him +as a girl home, tired from her first dance, feels for a young brother +asleep beside a Noah's Ark. + +"What is it?" I heard Duncan's voice repeating from the bed. + +"It's me," I rather weakly proclaimed. + +"What has happened?" was the question that came after a moment's +silence. + +I leaned with my face against the painted door-panel. It was smooth +and cool and pleasant to press one's skin against. + +"They've found Dinkie," I said. I could hear the squeak of springs as +my husband sat up in bed. + +"Is he all right?" + +"Yes, he's all right," I said with a great sigh. And I listened for an +answering sigh from the other side of the door. + +But instead of that Duncan's voice asked: "Where is he?" + +"At Alabama Ranch," I said, without realizing what that acknowledgment +meant. And again a brief period of silence intervened. + +"Who found him?" asked my husband, in a hardened voice. + +"Peter Ketley," I said, in as collected a voice as I could manage. And +this time the significance of the silence did not escape me. + +"Then your cup of happiness ought to be full," I heard the voice on +the other side of the door remark with heavy deliberateness. I stood +there with my face leaning against the cool panel. + +"It is," I said with a quiet audacity which surprised me almost as +much as it must have surprised the man on the bed a million miles away +from me. + + + + +_Sunday the Eighth_ + + +How different is life from what the fictioneers would paint it! How +hopelessly mixed-up and macaronic, how undignified in what ought to be +its big moments and how pompous in so many of its pettinesses! + +I told my husband to-day that Poppsy and I were going back to Casa +Grande. And that, surely, ought to have been the Big Moment in the +career of an unloved invertebrate. But the situation declined to take +off, as the airmen say. + +"I guess that means it's about time we got unscrambled," the man I had +once married and lived with quietly remarked. + +"Wasn't that your intention?" I just as quietly inquired. + +"It's what I've had forced on me," he retorted, with a protective +hardening of the Holbein-Astronomer jaw-line. + +"I'm sorry," was all I could find to say. + +He turned to the window and stared out at his big white iron fountain +set in his terraced lawn behind his endless cobble-stone walls. I +couldn't tell, of course, what he was thinking about. But I myself was +thinking of the past, the irrecoverable past, the irredeemable past, +the singing years of my womanly youth that seemed to be sealed in a +lowered coffin on which the sheltering earth would soon be heaped, on +which the first clods were already dropping with hollow sounds. We +each seemed afraid to look the other full in the eyes. So we armored +ourselves, as poor mortals must do, in the helmets of pretended +diffidence and the breast-plates of impersonality. + +"How are you going back?" my husband finally inquired. Whatever ghosts +it had been necessary to lay, I could see, he had by this time laid. +He no longer needed to stare out at the white iron fountain of which +he was so proud. + +"I've sent for the prairie-schooner," I told him. + +His flush of anger rather startled me. + +"Doesn't that impress you as rather cheaply theatrical?" he demanded. + +"I fancy it will be very comfortable," I told him, without looking up. +I'd apparently been attributing to him feelings which, after all, were +not so desolating as I might have wished. + +"Every one to his own taste," he observed as he called rather sharply +to Tokudo to bring him his humidor. Then he took out a cigar and +lighted it and ordered the car. And that was the lee and the long of +it. That was the way we faced our Great Divide, our forked trail that +veered off East and West into infinity! + + + + +_Thursday the Eleventh_ + + +The trek is over. And it was not one of triumph. For we find +ourselves, sometimes, in deeper water than we imagine. Then we have to +choke and gasp for a while before we can get our breath back. + +Peter, in the first place, didn't appear with the prairie-schooner. He +left that to come later in the day, with Whinnie and Struthers. He +appeared quite early Monday morning, with fire in his eye, and with a +demand to see the master of the house. Heaven knows what he had heard, +or how he had heard it. But the two men were having it hot and heavy +when I felt it was about time for me to step into the room. To be +quite frank, I had not expected any such outburst from Duncan. I knew +his feelings were not involved, and where you have a vacuum it is +impossible, of course, to have an explosion. I interpreted his +resentment as a show of opposition to save his face. But I was wrong. +And I was wrong about Peter. That mild-eyed man is no plaster saint. +He can fight, if he's goaded into it, and fight like a bulldog. He +was saying a few plain truths to Duncan, when I stepped into the room, +a few plain truths which took the color out of the Dour Man's face and +made him shake with anger. + +"For two cents," Duncan was rather childishly shouting at him, "I'd +fill you full of lead!" + +"Try it!" said Peter, who wasn't any too steady himself. "Try it, and +you'd at least end up with doing something in the open!" + +Duncan studied him, like a prize-fighter studying his waiting +opponent. + +"You're a cheap actor," he finally announced. "This sort of thing +isn't settled that way, and you know it." + +"And it's not going to be settled the way you intended," announced +Peter Ketley. + +"What do you know about my intentions?" demanded Duncan. + +"Much more than you imagine," retorted Peter. "I've got your record, +McKail, and I've had it for three years. I've stood by, until now; but +the time has come when I'm going to have a hand in this thing. And +you're not going to get your freedom by dragging this woman's name +through a divorce-court. If there's any dragging to be done, it's +your carcass that's going to be tied to the tail-board!" + +Duncan stood studying him with a face cheese-colored with hate. + +"Aren't you rather double-crossing yourself?" he mocked. + +"I'm not thinking about myself," said Peter. + +"Then what's prompting all the heroics?" demanded Duncan. + +"For two years and more, McKail," Peter cried out as he stepped closer +to the other man, "you've given this woman a pretty good working idea +of hell. And I've seen enough of it. It's going to end. It's got to +end. But it's not going to end the way you've so neatly figured out!" + +"Then how do you propose to end it?" Duncan demanded, with a sort of +second-wind of composure. But his face was still colorless. + +"You'll see when the time comes," retorted Peter. + +"You may have rather a long wait," taunted Duncan. + +"I have waited a number of years," answered the other man, with a +dignity which sent a small thrill up and down my spine. "And I can +wait a number of years more if I have to." + +"We all knew, of course, that you were waiting," sneered my husband. + +Peter turned to fling back an answer to that, but I stepped between +them. I was tired of being haggled over, like marked-down goods on a +bargain-counter. I was tired of being a passive agent before forces +that seemed stripping me of my last shred of dignity. I was tired of +the shoddiness of the entire shoddy situation. + +And I told them so. I told them I'd no intention of being bargained +over, and that I'd had rather enough of men for the rest of my natural +life, and if Duncan wanted his freedom he was at liberty to take it +without the slightest opposition from me. And I said a number of other +things, which I have no wish either to remember or record. But it +resulted in Duncan staring at me in a resurrection-plant sort of way, +and in Peter rather dolorously taking his departure. I wanted to call +him back, but I couldn't carpenter together any satisfactory excuse +for his coming back, and I couldn't see any use in it. + +So instead of journeying happily homeward in the cavernous old +prairie-schooner, I felt a bit ridiculous as Tokudo impassively +carried our belongings out to the canvas-covered wagon and Poppsy and +I climbed aboard. The good citizens of American Hill stared after us +as we rumbled down through the neatly boulevarded streets, and I felt +suspiciously like a gypsy-queen who'd been politely requested by the +local constabulary to move on. + +It wasn't until we reached the open country that my spirits revived. +Then the prairie seemed to reach out its hand to me and give me peace. +We camped, that first night, in the sheltering arm of a little coulee +threaded by a tiny stream. We cooked bacon and eggs and coffee while +Whinnie out-spanned his team and put up his tent. + +I sat on an oat-sack, after supper, with Poppsy between my knees, +watching the evening stars come out. They were worlds, I remembered, +some of them worlds perhaps with sorrowing men and women on them. And +they seemed very lonely and far-away worlds, until I heard the drowsy +voice of my Poppsy say up through the dusk: "In two days more, Mummy, +we'll be back to Dinkie, won't we?" + +And there was much, I remembered, for which a mother should be +thankful. + + + + +_Sunday the Fourteenth_ + + +_Dark, and true, and tender is the North._ Heaven bless the rhymster +who first penned those words. Spring is stealing hack to the prairie, +and our world is a world of beauty. The sky to-day is windrowed with +flat-bottomed cumulus-clouds, tier beyond tier above a level plane of +light, marking off the infinite distance like receding mile-stones on +a world turned over on its back. Occasionally the outstretched head of +a wild duck, pumping north with a black throb of wings, melts away to +a speck in the opaline air. Back among the muskeg reeds the waders are +courting and chattering, and early this morning I heard the plaintive +winnowing call-note of the Wilson snipe, and later the _punk-e-lunk_ +love-cry of a bittern to his mate. There's an eagle planing in lazy +circles high in the air, even now, putting a soft-pedal on the noise +of the coots and grebes as he circles over their rush-lined cabarets. +And somewhere out on the range a bull is lowing. It is the season of +love and the season of happiness. Dinkie and Poppsy and I are going +out to gather prairie-crocuses. They are thick now in the prairie-sod, +soft blue and lavender and sometimes mauve. We must dance to the +vernal saraband while we can: Spring is so short in this norland +country of ours. It comes late. But as Peter says, A late spring never +deceives.... + +I thought I had offended Peter for life. But when he appeared late +this afternoon and I asked him why he had kept away from me, he said +these first few days naturally belonged to Dinkie and he'd been busy +studying marsh-birds. He looked rather rumpled and muddy, and +impressed me as a man sadly in need of a woman to look after his +things. + +"Let's ride," said Peter. "I want to talk to you." + +I was afraid of that talk, but I was more afraid something might +happen to interfere with it. So I changed into my old riding-duds and +put on my weather-stained old sombrero and we saddled Buntie and +Laughing-Gas and went loping off over the sun-washed prairie with our +shadows behind us. + +We rode a long way before Peter said anything. I wanted to be happy, +but I wasn't quite able to be. I tried to think of neither the past +nor the future, but there were too many ghosts of other days loping +along the trail beside us. + +"What are you going to do?" Peter finally inquired. + +"About what?" I temporized as he pulled up beside me. + +"About everything," he ungenerously responded. + +"I don't know what to do, Peter," I had to acknowledge. "I'm like a +barrel without hoops. I want to stick together, but one more thump +will surely send me to pieces!" + +"Then why not get the hoops around?" suggested Peter. + +"But where will I get the hoops?" I asked. + +"Here," he said. He was, I noticed, holding out his arms. And I +laughed, even though my heart was heavy. + +"Men have been a great disappointment to me, Peter," I said with a +shake of my sombrero. + +"Try me," suggested Peter. + +But still again I had to shake my head. + +"That wouldn't be fair, Peter," I told him. "I can't spoil your life +to see what's left of my own patched up." + +"Then you're going to spoil two of 'em!" he promptly asserted. + +"But I don't believe in that sort of thing," I did my best to explain +to him. "I've had my innings, and _I'm out_. I've a one-way heart, the +same as a one-way street. I don't think there's anything in the world +more odious than promiscuity. That's a big word, but it stands for an +even bigger offense against God. I've always said I intended to be a +single-track woman." + +"But your track's blown up," contended Peter. + +"Then I'll have to lay me a new one," I said with a fine show of +assurance. + +"And do you know where it will lead?" he demanded, + +"Where?" I asked. + +"Straight to me," he said as he studied me with eyes that were so +quiet and kind I could feel a flutter of my heart-wings. + +But still again I shook my head. + +"That would be bringing you nothing but a withered up old has-been," I +said with a mock-wail of misery. + +And Peter actually laughed at that. + +"It'll be a good ten years before you've even grown up," he retorted. +"And another twenty years before you've really settled down!" + +"You're saying I'll never have sense," I objected. "And I know you're +right." + +"That's what I love about you," averred Peter. + +"What you love about me?" I demanded. + +"Yes," he said with his patient old smile, "your imperishable +youthfulness, your eternal never-ending eternity-defying golden-tinted +girlishness!" + +A flute began to play in my heart. And I knew that like Ulysses's men +I would have to close my ears to it. But it's easier to row past an +island than to run away from your own heart. + +"I know it's a lie, Peter, but I love you for saying it. It makes me +want to hug you, and it makes me want to pirouette, if I wasn't on +horseback. It makes my heart sing. But it's only the singing of one +lonely little chickadee in the middle of a terribly big pile of ruins. +For that's all my life can be now, just a hopeless smash-up. And +you're cut out for something better than a wrecking-car for the rest +of your days." + +"No, no," protested Peter. "It's _you_ who've got to save _me_." + +"Save you?" I echoed. + +"You've got to give me something to live for, or I'll just rust away +in the ditch and never get back to the rails again." + +"Peter!" I cried. + +"What?" he asked. + +"You're not playing fair. You're trying to make me pity you." + +"Well, don't you?" demanded Peter. + +"I would if I saw you sacrificing your life for a woman with a +crazy-quilt past." + +"I'm not thinking of the past," asserted Peter, "I'm thinking of the +future." + +"That's just it," I tried to explain. "I'll have to face that future +with a clouded name. I'll be a divorced woman. Ugh! I always thought +of divorced women as something you wouldn't quite care to sit next to +at table. I hate divorce." + +"I'm a Quaker myself," acknowledged Peter. "But I occasionally think +of what Cobbett once said: 'I don't much like weasels. Yet I hate +rats. Therefore I say success to the weasels!'" + +"I don't see what weasels have to do with it," I complained. + +"Putting one's house in order again may sometimes be as beneficent as +surgery," contended Peter. + +"And sometimes as painful," I added. + +"Yet there's no mistake like not cleaning up old mistakes." + +"But I hate it," I told him. "It all seems so--so cheap." + +"On the contrary," corrected Peter, "it's rather costly." He pulled up +across my path and made me come to a stop. "My dear," he said, very +solemn again, "I know the stuff you're made of. I know you've got to +climb to the light by a path of your own choosing. And you have to see +the light with your own eyes. But I'm willing to wait. I _have_ +waited, a very long time. But there's one fact you've got to face: I +love you too much ever to dream of giving you up." + +I don't think either of us moved for a full moment. The flute was +singing so loud in my heart that I was afraid of myself. And, +woman-like, I backed away from the thing I wanted. + +"It's not _me_, Peter, I must remember now. It's my bairns. I've two +bairns to bring up." + +"I've got the three of you to bring up," maintained Peter. And that +made us both sit silent for another moment or two. + +"It's not that simple," I finally said, though Peter smiled guardedly +at my ghost of a smile. + +"It would be if you cared for me as much as Dinkie does," he said with +quite unnecessary solemnity. + +"Oh, Peter, I do, I do," I cried out as the memory of all I owed him +surged mistily through my mind. "But a gray hair is something you +can't joke away. And I've got five of them, right here over my left +ear. I found them, months ago. And they're there to stay!" + +"How about my bald spot?" demanded my oppressor and my deliverer +rolled into one. + +"What's a bald spot compared to a bob-cat of a temper like mine?" I +challenged, remembering how I'd once heard a revolver-hammer snap in +my husband's face. + +"But it's your spirit I like," maintained the unruffled Peter. + +"You wouldn't always," I reminded him. + +Yet he merely looked at me with his trust-me-and-test-me expression. + +"I'll chance it!" he said, after a quite contented moment or two of +meditative silence. + +"But don't you see," I went forlornly arguing on, "it mustn't be a +chance. That's something people of our age can never afford to take." + +And Peter, at that, for some reason I couldn't fathom, began to wag +his head. He did it slowly and lugubriously, like a man who inspects a +road he has no liking for. But at the same time, apparently, he was +finding it hard to tuck away a small smile of triumph. + +"Then we must never see each other again," he solemnly asserted. + +"Peter!" I cried. + +"I must go away, at once," he meditatively observed. + +"_Peter!_" I said again, with the flute turning into a pair of +ice-tongs that clamped into the corners of my heart. + +"Far, far away," he continued as he studiously avoided my eye. "For +there will be safety now only in flight." + +"Safety from what?" I demanded. + +"From you," retorted Peter. + +"But what will happen to _me_, if you do that?" I heard my own voice +asking as Buntie started to paw the prairie-floor and I did my level +best to fight down the black waves of desolation that were +half-drowning me. "What'll there be to hold me up, when you're the +only man in all this world who can keep my barrel of happiness from +going slap-bang to pieces? What----?" + +"_Verboten!_" interrupted Peter. But that solemn-soft smile of his +gathered me in and covered me, very much as the rumpled feathers of a +mother-bird cover her young, her crazily twittering and crazily +wandering young who never know their own mind. + +"What'll happen to me," I went desperately on, "when you're the only +man alive who understands this crazy old heart of mine, when you've +taught me to hitch the last of my hope on the one unselfish man I've +ever known?" + +This seemed to trouble Peter. But only remotely, as the lack of +grammar in the Lord's Prayer might affect a Holy Roller. He insisted, +above all things, on being judicial. + +"Then I'll have to come back, I suppose," he finally admitted, "for +Dinkie's sake." + +"Why for Dinkie's sake?" I asked. + +"Because some day, my dear, our Dinkie is going to be a great man. And +I want to have a hand in fashioning that greatness." + +I sat looking at the red ball of the sun slipping down behind the +shoulder of the world. A wind came out of the North, cool and sweet +and balsamic with hope. I heard a loon cry. And then the earth was +still again. + +"_We'll be waiting_," I said, with a tear of happiness tickling the +bridge of my nose. And then, so that Peter might not see still another +loon crying, I swung Buntie sharply about on the trail. And we rode +home, side by side, through the twilight. + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prairie Child, by Arthur Stringer + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRAIRIE CHILD *** + +***** This file should be named 28514.txt or 28514.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/8/5/1/28514/ + +Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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