Jack was obviously in great spirits, but with a sudden soberness he sat down beside me, and I felt his hand on my knee. "It's not quite the thing, old chap," he said, "to cut us dead, just because we're married--that is, some of us."

"I haven't cut you," I retorted. "Give me time."

"I know it's a raw deal for you," he went on, disregarding my interruption, "and I'd give--I'd give--half of my happiness, if you like, if I could put it right. It's a little embarra.s.sing for us all.

But don't you think Jean is worth a fight--a little more fight than you have made?"

"I understand English," I said, "particularly Jean's English. If she wants me now she'll have to say so."

"Oh, get off your high horse. He's a lame nag, anyway! Jean thinks she loves Spoof, but she doesn't. She's just infatuated with him. She'll grow out of that. But you might help her along a little."

"I'm not so sure. Spoof's a pretty decent chap," I said, inwardly giving myself credit for amazing magnanimity.

"Of course he is," Jack agreed, somewhat too readily, as it seemed to me. "But that has nothing to do with it. Jean isn't putting you and Spoof under the magnifying gla.s.s, so to speak, and studying out which is the more decent chap. It isn't done that way. And to save her life she couldn't tell you why, to-day, she thinks she loves Spoof, and why, to-morrow, she will know she loves you. Reason doesn't enter into these things at all."

"That doesn't make it any easier for me."

"Maybe not," Jack admitted. "And, as I have argued that reason doesn't enter into the consideration, I suppose it is of no use to reason about it. Then let us get on to ground you can understand. Come on over for supper."

I accepted with more alacrity than might be expected of a young man who was resolved that although tied to the stake he would not thrust his feet in the fire. Marjorie kissed me when I went in,--a kiss for her dear old bachelor brother, she said, obviously in fun, but I think there was a pang of deep sisterly sympathy underneath. Jean was calm, poised, self-controlled; her eyes seemed larger than usual, and the white of them showed that clear blue tinge that is found in some kinds of delicate china. Either the lamp light was peculiarly yellow or Jean's complexion was below the mark. She chatted freely, almost too freely, and laughed upon occasion, but there was no ring in her laughter.

Altogether, it was rather a difficult evening. We played cards after supper, and tried, as so many others have done, to forget our troubles in the chance of a lucky hand. Even the cards were against me. Jean and I had always played together, but to-night Jack insisted that it was not meet that a man should have his wife for a partner at cards, so our combination was broken. I may have had a subconscious and disturbing feeling that Jean's hand, to my left, would have made better holding than anything I could hope to draw from the deck. At any rate I played abominably and went home early.

And so the days dragged on. I kept a corner of my south window rubbed clear of frost so that I might maintain a look-out for a visit from Spoof, for although he was my rival, or because he was my rival, I felt that I had with Spoof something very much in common. But Spoof seemed suddenly to have discontinued his visits to Fourteen and Twenty-two, and for the first time in that winter the trail to his shack was entirely over-blown and obliterated in a waste of snow.

Jack came over every day, and Marjorie and Jean came two or three times a week and gave my shack the womanly touches of which it was beginning to stand in need, but Jean never came alone. I began to understand that the prairies give solitude without privacy; if one seeks privacy he goes to the city for it.

In this way a couple of weeks had pa.s.sed when one evening it occurred to me that I could kill a dull hour or two, and discharge a somewhat neglected filial duty, by writing a letter to my father. Investigation proved, what I greatly suspected, that I had no writing paper, so I went over to Jack's to borrow some. They had none either, but Jack produced an old account book with some blank sheets in it, which we decided would do quite well. In those days we weren't particular about stationery.

Jean was in her room while I was there, and did not come out, so in a few minutes I returned to Fourteen. There I set the lamp on the table and spread the old account book out before me. It once had been owned by Jack's father; the first pages were filled with items which apparently had to do with the purchase of the Lane farm, and with Mr. Lane's services in the woolen mill. I glanced over them with casual interest and as I did so a loose slip fell from the pages. I picked it up from the floor and found a number of lines in Jean's handwriting:

When through the livelong day I sigh And ponder on my sad estate, I would my Nemesis defy And burst the bounding cords of Fate.

Now would I tear each bond away; Now would I risk your sad reproof; Come, let us live and love who may: Come to me . . . Spoof.

"So it has come to that," I said to myself. "Love-sick doggerel!" I crushed the sheet of paper in my hand in a rage, even while a hot flush of color ran up my face at the realization of the fact that I had read something never intended for my eyes--for _my_ eyes least of all. So she could tear the bonds away; she could risk his "sad reproof"; she could do anything but find words to fill out the feet of the last line. "Come to me . . . Spoof!" With a sudden stabbing at my heart the question interrogated me, Could Jean be ingenious enough to use those dots, after the manner of our modern writers, to suggest something which she shrank from saying in plain English? Here will I use some of them myself . . .

CHAPTER XX.

I resolved to have it out with Jean. There was no sense in letting things go on like this. Jean had happiness within her grasp, for the taking, but she persisted in writing moon-struck doggerel to a man who apparently cared no more for her than for the post that marked the corner of his section. Spoof's continued and deliberate neglect--I called it neglect now----admitted no other explanation.

I spent a wakeful night thinking about this, and toward morning I got up and retrieved the crumpled bit of paper which I had thrown into a corner of the kitchen. I spread it out and read the lines again. A night of reflexion had worn the edge from my indignation, and I admitted that, from an artistic point of view, the verses were perhaps not so hopeless as I had thought them. Indeed, they suggested a certain germ of poetic ability. A little devil of conscience began an insurrection in my sense of fair play, demanding to know if I could write as well myself. But I am no poet. I took a pencil and put down the word Jean, and then set about hunting for rhymes for it, but I could think of only two--"lean"

and "bean." Neither of these seemed to lend itself to poetic treatment.

Suddenly a whiff of memory rushing in from somewhere sent me scuttling among old school books at the bottom of my trunk. It was a whim of mine to keep my old school books, if only that in after years I might read and appreciate the little gems of literature which, with the a.s.sistance of a phlegmatic teacher, I cordially hated when a child. Here it was--an old Ontario Reader with a sensational story about an Indian woman who killed a bear with a butcher knife, or some such weapon. My sympathy, I remember, had always been with the bear, doubtless because of the picture which was made to represent the Indian woman. I had read this story again and again, when all other pa.s.sages in the book had failed to interest me, and some little long-forgotten cell of memory said I would find a fragment of paper tucked between these pages. Sure enough, there it was! I drew it out eagerly, but tenderly and almost reverently, and held it under the lamp. How that strange, childish scrawl seemed to run all over my heart and pucker it into little gasping pockets! I could feel a thumping between my lungs and the hard beating of my pulse went throbbing through the paper in my fingers.

When I am old And very tall I hope my name Will be Mrs. Hall.

A mist came up out of the past and blurred the scrawly letters until they swam before my eyes and faded out of sight. They had carried me back to the dear dead days of childhood--that Eden of life which comes before the disillusionment which is the Fall. The years between had gone out with a gulp that filled my throat, and again we were little children playing together, solemnly mating ourselves for the future under the witnessing murmur of the great pine. That had been one of the great days in my life, and I had not known it then. I wonder how often we know the great day when it is actually upon us! But in that day I had drunk in something which had become part of my system; part of my flesh and bone and brain; part of my hope, my aspiration, my life. And now would I give it up? Never--never! I pressed the previous missive to my lips and suddenly the dam of my overwrought nerves gave way, and tears rushed down upon me. With a man's shame I would have checked them if I could, but the flood would not be stopped--and there was none to see. I fell on my bed and let the storm sweep over me.

After a while came calmness, and with that calmness the resolution which I recorded in the opening lines of this chapter. I would have it out with Jean. I would put up another fight for all that made life worth the living. I would _not_ accept my fate; at least, I would not accept the fate to which Jean had resigned me. She would see! . . .

But this was a battle which could not be fought in public, and I racked my wits for some way in which I might lay siege to Jean--alone. I hardly could ask Jack and Marjorie to get out of their own house while I subjected Jean to the main drive which was to break down her resistance; much less could I invite Jean to Fourteen for the same purpose. The prairies, with all their vast s.p.a.ces, refused me just that one little niche of privacy I needed. As I turned the matter over in my mind a clever plan unfolded itself before me. I would make a sled and invite Jean to go coasting somewhere along the banks of the gully. Then we would wander on and on, the farther the better.

Fortunately some boards remained of the table which had supported the wedding feast, and I went to work with a will. The reaction from inactivity was in itself a tonic to my spirits, and I found myself whistling an improvised tune which I fitted to the words, "When I am old and very tall, etc." Hope rebounded, as hope will, from its dip into despair, and I began to picture the shack on Fourteen as it would be under the loving care of "Mrs. Hall," and the joy that we would find in its seclusion. The winter months, which had been dragging so unutterably, suddenly threatened to be all too short.

I completed my sleigh and presented myself at the door of Twenty-two.

Jack looked upon the vehicle with evident misgiving. I may have built it rather stoutly, but that was no reason why he should suggest that I hitch an ox to it.

"An ox!" I retorted." This is built for speed. I am going to ask Jean to go coasting."

"Aha!" said Jack, significantly. "I wish you all possible--speed."

Jean showed no reluctance about going. She drew on a woolen sweater and a short, cloth winter coat, with a collar of some fluffy kind of fur which had originally grown on a cat. She had a little fur cap of the same material, which she pulled down snugly on her head, and we were off.

We followed the crest of the gully for some distance in the direction of Sneezit's farm, ostensibly in search of a good coasting spot, but actually much engaged with our thoughts and the real purpose of our outing. That Jean understood it perfectly I was convinced, and under such circ.u.mstances the fact that she had so readily accepted my invitation was at least a hopeful omen.

Walking on the untracked snow in midwinter is an uncertain business, and the prairie people rarely make use of snowshoes. For the most part there was a frozen crust that bore our weight, but this crust has an unfortunate habit of giving way at unexpected moments, particularly when one has just taken a big stride forward. There is an effect very much like coming upon the head of the stairs in the darkness when you think you are still safely walking along the hall. It precipitates one forward with great suddenness, but fortunately snow is a good thing to fall in.

We scrambled to our feet, laughing and in high spirits. It was a wonderful thing to laugh again, and mean it.

At last we found a place where the snow had curved in a great white plume over the bank of the gully. For fifty or sixty feet it dropped away in an absolutely smooth descent; then came a sudden pitch, as though a great ladle had scooped out the drift; then a succession of little billows whipped up by the cross currents at the foot of the hill.

"How's that?" I demanded.

"It looks good," said Jean. "Let me see if it is firm."

With that she ran out upon the drift, her dainty feet tripping down it like a bird. But the descent was steeper than she thought; her momentum over-balanced her, and in an instant I saw her careering wildly down the slope, her arms outstretched, her hair flying loose from under the rim of her cap. Near the foot she disappeared entirely.

Perhaps I should have rushed after her, but I didn't. I sat down leisurely at the top of the hill and waited for her to reappear.

Presently a mittened hand came up over the crest which hid her from view; then something round and furry, like a sleeping kitten; then a forehead, two eyes, and a glimpse of cheeks.

"Aren't you coming down--to help me?" she called.

Now I had meant to stand on my rights; to tell Jean that she had gone down the hill on her own accord, and might come back in the same way; perhaps to poke some quiet mirth at her efforts to scramble up the slippery drift. When a man contemplates matrimony he may as well settle at once who's who, and why. Now was my time to be firm.

"No, I'm not coming," I said.

Jean looked at me for a moment, in surprise; then uttered not another word. But from her hand she drew her woolen mitten, and raised her fine, firm fingers in the air. One of those fingers crooked, with the knuckle bent toward me, and the finger pointing to her face; then, with a little seductive flicker, she beckoned me to her. . . . . . It was too much. I sprang on my sled and shot like an arrow to its target.

When we climbed the hill together she was radiant. "Isn't it wonderful, wonderful!" she exclaimed. "All this white wilderness to play in, to shout in--Listen!" And she h.e.l.loed at the top of her voice. Only an echo, beating back from the banks of the gully, answered. "See, we are all alone--alone in all the world. "Why didn't you bring me out here before?"

"Are you glad to be alone with me, Jean?" I asked, drawing the unmittened hand into mine. "Are you glad to be here, alone, with me?"

"Why, yes. You are my friend."