In the Midst of Alarms Part 10

"I am afraid I lack a sense of humor."

"All women do," said Yates with easy confidence. "At least, all I've ever met."

Yates was sitting in a wooden chair, which he now placed at the end of the table, tilting it back until his shoulders rested against the wall. His feet were upon the rung, and he waved his hat back and forth, fanning himself, for it was warm. In this position he could look up at the face of the pretty girl before him, whose smooth brow was touched with just the slightest indication of a faint frown. She did not even glance at the self-confident young man, but kept her eyes fixed resolutely on her work. In the silence the table creaked as Margaret kneaded the dough. Yates felt an unaccustomed sensation of embarra.s.sment creeping over him, and realized that he would have to re-erect the conversation on a new basis. It was manifestly absurd that a resourceful New Yorker, who had conversed unabashed with presidents, senators, generals, and other great people of a great nation, should be put out of countenance by the unaccountable coldness of a country girl in the wilds of Canada.

"I have not had an opportunity of properly introducing myself," he said at last, when the creaking of the table, slight as it was, became insupportable. "My name is Richard Yates, and I come from New York. I am camping out in this neighborhood to relieve, as it were, a mental strain--the result of years of literary work."

Yates knew from long experience that the quickest and surest road to a woman's confidence was through her sympathy. "Mental strain" struck him as a good phrase, indicating midnight oil and the hollow eye of the devoted student.

"Is your work mental, then?" asked Margaret incredulously, flas.h.i.+ng, for the first time, a dark-eyed look at him.

"Yes," Yates laughed uneasily. He had manifestly missed fire. "I notice by your tone that you evidently think my equipment meager. You should not judge by appearances, Miss Howard. Most of us are better than we seem, pessimists to the contrary notwithstanding. Well, as I was saying, the camping company consists of two partners. We are so different in every respect that we are the best of friends. My partner is Mr.

Stillson Renmark, professor of something or other in University College, Toronto."

For the first time Margaret exhibited some interest in the conversation.

"Professor Renmark? I have heard of him."

"Dear me! I had no idea the fame of the professor had penetrated beyond the precincts of the university--if a university has precincts. He told me it had all the modern improvements, but I suspected at the time that was merely Renny's brag."

The frown on the girl's brow deepened, and Yates was quick to see that he had lost ground again, if, indeed, he had ever gained any, which he began to doubt. She evidently did not relish his glib talk about the university. He was just about to say something deferentially about that inst.i.tution, for he was not a man who would speak disrespectfully of the equator if he thought he might curry favor with his auditor by doing otherwise, when it occurred to him that Miss Howard's interest was centered in the man, and not in the university.

"In this world, Miss Howard," he continued, "true merit rarely finds its reward; at least, the reward shows some reluctance in making itself visible in time for man to enjoy it. Professor Renmark is a man so worthy that I was rather astonished to learn that you knew of him. I am glad for his sake that it is so, for no man more thoroughly deserves fame than he."

"I know nothing of him," said Margaret, "except what my brother has written. My brother is a student at the university."

"Is he really? And what is he going in for?"

"A good education."

Yates laughed.

"Well, that is an all-round handy thing for a person to have about him.

I often wish I had had a university training. Still, it is not valued in an American newspaper office as much as might be. Yet," he added in a tone that showed he did not desire to be unfair to a man of education, "I have known some university men who became pa.s.sably good reporters in time."

The girl made no answer, but attended strictly to the work in hand.

She had the rare gift of silence, and these intervals of quiet abashed Yates, whose most frequent boast was that he could outtalk any man on earth. Opposition, or even abuse, merely served as a spur to his volubility, but taciturnity disconcerted him.

"Well," he cried at length, with something like desperation, "let us abandon this animated discussion on the subject of education, and take up the more practical topic of bread. Would you believe, Miss Howard, that I am an expert in bread making?"

"I think you said already that you made your bread."

"Ah, yes, but I meant then that I made it by the sweat of my good lead pencil. Still, I have made bread in my time, and I believe that some of those who subsisted upon it are alive to-day. The endurance of the human frame is something marvelous, when you come to think of it. I did the baking in a lumber camp one winter. Used to dump the contents of a sack of flour into a trough made out of a log, pour in a pail or two of melted snow, and mix with a hoe after the manner of a bricklayer's a.s.sistant making mortar. There was nothing small or mean about my bread making. I was in the wholesale trade."

"I pity the unfortunate lumbermen."

"Your sympathy is entirely misplaced, Miss Howard. You ought to pity me for having to pander to such appet.i.tes as those men brought in from the woods with them. They never complained of the quality of the bread, although there was occasionally some grumbling about the quant.i.ty. I have fed sheaves to a thres.h.i.+ng machine and logs to a sawmill, but their voracity was nothing to that of a big lumberman just in from felling trees. Enough, and plenty of it, is what he wants. No 'tabbledote' for him. He wants it all at once, and he wants it right away. If there is any was.h.i.+ng necessary, he is content to do it after the meal. I know nothing, except a morning paper, that has such an appet.i.te for miscellaneous stuff as the man of the woods."

The girl made no remark, but Yates could see that she was interested in his talk in spite of herself. The bread was now in the pans, and she had drawn out the table to the middle of the floor; the baking board had disappeared, and the surface of the table was cleaned. With a light, deft motion of her two hands she had whisked over its surface the spotlessly white cloth, which flowed in waves over the table and finally settled calmly in its place like the placid face of a pond in the moonlight. Yates realized that the way to success lay in keeping the conversation in his own hands and not depending on any response. In this way a man may best display the store of knowledge he possesses, to the admiration and bewilderment of his audience, even though his store consists merely of samples like the outfit of a commercial traveler; yet a commercial traveler who knows his business can so arrange his samples on the table of his room in a hotel that they give the onlooker an idea of the vastness and wealth of the warehouses from which they are drawn.

"Bread," said Yates with the serious air of a very learned man, "is a most interesting subject. It is a historical subject--it is a biblical subject. As an article of food it is mentioned oftener in the Bible than any other. It is used in parable and to point a moral. 'Ye must not live on bread alone.'"

From the suspicion of a twinkle in the eye of his listener he feared he had not quoted correctly. He knew he was not now among that portion of his samples with which he was most familiar, so he hastened back to the historical aspect of his subject. Few people could skate over thinner ice than Richard Yates, but his natural shrewdness always caused him to return to more solid footing.

"Now, in this country bread has gone through three distinct stages, and although I am a strong believer in progress, yet, in the case of our most important article of food, I hold that the bread of to-day is inferior to the bread our mothers used to make, or perhaps, I should say, our grandmothers. This is, unfortunately, rapidly becoming the age of machinery--and machinery, while it may be quicker, is certainly not so thorough as old-fas.h.i.+oned hand work. There is a new writer in England named Ruskin who is very bitter against machinery. He would like to see it abolished--at least, so he says. I will send for one of his books, and show it to you, if you will let me."

"You, in New York, surely do not call the author of 'Modern Painters'

and 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture' a new man. My father has one of his books which must be nearly twenty years old."

This was the longest speech Margaret had made to him, and, as he said afterward to the professor in describing its effects, it took him right off his feet. He admitted to the professor, but not to the girl, that he had never read a word of Ruskin in his life. The allusion he had made to him he had heard someone else use, and he had worked it into an article before now with telling effect. "As Mr. Ruskin says" looked well in a newspaper column, giving an air of erudition and research to it. Mr.

Yates, however, was not at the present moment prepared to enter into a discussion on either the age or the merits of the English writer.

"Ah, well," he said, "technically speaking, of course, Ruskin is not a new man. What I meant was that he is looked on--ah--in New York as--that is--you know--as comparatively new--comparatively new. But, as I was saying about bread, the old log-house era of bread, as I might call it, produced the most delicious loaf ever made in this country. It was the salt-rising kind, and was baked in a round, flat-bottomed iron kettle.

Did you ever see the baking kettle of other days?"

"I think Mrs. Bartlett has one, although she never uses it now. It was placed on the hot embers, was it not?"

"Exactly," said Yates, noting with pleasure that the girl was thawing, as he expressed it to himself. "The hot coals were drawn out and the kettle placed upon them. When the lid was in position, hot coals were put on he top of it. The bread was firm and white and sweet inside, with the most delicious golden brown crust all around. Ah, that was bread!

but perhaps I appreciated it because I was always hungry in those days.

Then came the alleged improvement of the tin Dutch oven. That was the second stage in the evolution of bread in this country. It also belonged to the log-house and open-fireplace era. Bread baked by direct heat from the fire and reflected heat from the polished tin. I think our present cast-iron stove arrangement is preferable to that, although not up to the old-time kettle."

If Margaret had been a reader of the New York _Argus_, she would have noticed that the facts set forth by her visitor had already appeared in that paper, much elaborated, in an article ent.i.tled "Our Daily Bread."

In the pause that ensued after Yates had finished his dissertation on the staff of life the stillness was broken by a long wailing cry. It began with one continued, sustained note, and ended with a wail half a tone below the first. The girl paid no attention to it, but Yates started to his feet.

"In the name of--What's that?"

Margaret smiled, but before she could answer the stillness was again broken by what appeared to be the more distant notes of a bugle.

"The first," she said, "was Kitty Bartlett's voice calling the men home from the field for dinner. Mrs. Bartlett is a very good housekeeper and is usually a few minutes ahead of the neighbors with the meals. The second was the sound of a horn farther up the road. It is what you would deplore as the age of tin applied to the dinner call, just as your tin oven supplanted the better bread maker. I like Kitty's call much better than the tin horn. It seems to me more musical, although it appeared to startle you."

"Oh, you can talk!" cried Yates with audacious admiration, at which the girl colored slightly and seemed to retire within herself again. "And you can make fun of people's historical lore, too. Which do you use--the tin horn or the natural voice?"

"Neither. If you will look outside, you will see a flag at the top of a pole. That is our signal."

It flashed across the mind of Yates that this was intended as an intimation that he might see many things outside to interest him. He felt that his visit had not been at all the brilliant success he had antic.i.p.ated. Of course the quest for bread had been merely an excuse. He had expected to be able to efface the unfavorable impression he knew he had made by his jaunty conversation on the Ridge Road the day before, and he realized that his position was still the same. A good deal of Yates' success in life came from the fact that he never knew when he was beaten. He did not admit defeat now, but he saw he had, for some reason, not gained any advantage in a preliminary skirmish. He concluded it would be well to retire in good order, and renew the contest at some future time. He was so unused to anything like a rebuff that all his fighting qualities were up in arms, and he resolved to show this unimpressionable girl that he was not a man to be lightly valued.

As he rose the door from the main portion of the house opened, and there entered a woman hardly yet past middle age, who had once been undoubtedly handsome, but on whose worn and faded face was the look of patient weariness which so often is the result of a youth spent in helping a husband to overcome the stumpy stubbornness of an American bush farm. When the farm is conquered, the victor is usually vanquished.

It needed no second glance to see that she was the mother from whom the daughter had inherited her good looks. Mrs. Howard did not appear surprised to see a stranger standing there; in fact, the faculty of being surprised at anything seemed to have left her. Margaret introduced them quietly, and went about her preparation for the meal. Yates greeted Mrs. Howard with effusion. He had come, he said, on a bread mission. He thought he knew something about bread, but he now learned he came too early in the day. He hoped he might have the privilege of repeating his visit.

"But you are not going now?" said Mrs. Howard with hospitable anxiety.

"I fear I have already stayed too long," answered Yates lingeringly.

"My partner, Professor Renmark, is also on a foraging expedition at your neighbors', the Bartletts. He is doubtless back in camp long ago, and will be expecting me."

"No fear of that. Mrs. Bartlett would never let anyone go when there is a meal on the way."

"I am afraid I shall be giving extra trouble by staying. I imagine there is quite enough to do in every farmhouse without entertaining any chance tramp who happens along. Don't you agree with me for once, Miss Howard?"

Yates was reluctant to go, and yet he did not wish to stay unless Margaret added her invitation to her mother's. He felt vaguely that his reluctance did him credit, and that he was improving. He could not remember a time when he had not taken without question whatever the G.o.ds sent, and this unaccustomed qualm of modesty caused him to suspect that there were depths in his nature hitherto unexplored. It always flatters a man to realize that he is deeper than he thought.