Masters of the Wheat-Lands Part 42

"Then you mean to make her understand what he is doing?"

"No," replied Mrs. Hastings; "I want you to do it. I've reasons for believing that your influence would go further with her than mine. For one thing, I fancy she is feeling rather ashamed of herself."

Agatha looked thoughtful. She had certainly not credited Sally with possessing any fine sense of honor, but she was willing to accept Mrs.

Hastings' a.s.surance.

"The situation," she pointed out, "is rather a delicate one. You wish to expose Gregory's conduct to the girl he is going to marry, though, as you admit, the explanation will probably be painful to her. Can't you understand that the course suggested is a particularly difficult and repugnant one--to me?"

"I've no doubt of it," admitted Mrs. Hastings. "Still, I believe it must be adopted--for several reasons. In the first place, I think that if we can pull Gregory up now we shall save him from involving himself irretrievably. After all, perhaps, you owe him the effort. Then I think that we all owe something to Harry, and we can, at least, endeavor to carry out his wishes. He told what was to be done with his possessions in a will, and he never could have antic.i.p.ated that Gregory would dissipate them as he is doing."

The least reason, as she had foreseen, proved convincing to Agatha, and she made a sign of concurrence.

"If you will drive me over I will do what I can," she promised.

Now that she had succeeded, Mrs. Hastings lost no time, and they set out for the Creighton homestead next day. Soon after they reached the house she contrived that Sally should be left alone with Agatha. The two girls stood outside the house together when Agatha turned to her companion.

"Sally," she said, "there is something that I must tell you."

Sally glanced at her face, and then walked forward until the log barn hid them from the house. She sat down upon a pile of straw and motioned to Agatha to take a place beside her.

"Now," she observed sharply, "you can go on; it's about Gregory, I suppose."

Agatha, who found it very difficult to begin, though she had been well primed by Hastings on the previous evening, sat down in the straw, and looked about her for a moment or two. It was a hot afternoon, dazzlingly bright, and almost breathlessly still. In front of her the dark green wheat rolled waist-high, and beyond it the vast sweep of gra.s.s stretched back to the sky-line. Far away a team and a wagon slowly moved across the prairie, but that was the only sign of life, and no sound from the house reached them to break the heavy stillness.

She finally nerved herself to the effort, and spoke earnestly for several minutes before she glanced at Sally. It was evident that Sally had understood all that had been said, for she sat very still with a hard, set face.

"Oh!" Sally exclaimed, "if I'd thought you'd come to tell me this because you were vexed with me, I'd know what to do."

This was what Agatha had dreaded. It certainly looked as if she had come to triumph over her rival's humiliation, but Sally made it clear that she acquitted her of that intention.

"Still," said Sally, "I know that wasn't the reason, and I'm not mad with--you. It hurts"--she made an abrupt movement--"but I know it's true."

She turned to Agatha suddenly. "Why did you do it?"

"I thought you might save Gregory, if I told you."

"That was all?" Sally looked at her with incredulous eyes.

"No," answered Agatha simply, "that was only part. It did not seem right that Gregory should go against Wyllard's wishes, and gamble the Range away on the wheat market."

She admitted it without hesitation, for she realized now exactly what had animated her to seek this painful interview. She was fighting Wyllard's battle, and that fact sustained her.

Sally winced. "Yes" she agreed, "I guess you had to tell me. He was fond of you. One could be proud of that. Harry Wyllard never did anything low down and mean."

Agatha did not resent her candor. Although this was a thing she would scarcely have credited a little while ago, she saw that the girl felt the contrast between Gregory's character and that of the man whose place he had taken, and regretted it. Agatha's eyes became dim with unshed tears.

"Wyllard, they think, is dead," she said, in a low voice. "You have Gregory still."

Sally looked at her with unveiled compa.s.sion, and Agatha did not shrink from it.

"Yes," she declared, with a simplicity that became her, "and Gregory must have someone to--take care of him. I must do it if I can."

There was no doubt that Agatha was stirred. This half-taught girl's quiet acceptance of the burden that many women must carry made her almost ashamed.

"We will leave it to you," she said.

It became evident that there was another side to Sally's character, for her manner changed, and the hardness crept back into her face.

"Well," she admitted, "I'd 'most been expecting something of this kind when I heard that man Edmonds was going to the Range. He has got a pull on Gregory, but he's surely not going to feel quite happy when I get hold of him."

She rose in another moment, and saying nothing further, walked back toward the house, in front of which they came upon Mrs. Hastings. Sally looked at Mrs. Hastings significantly.

"I'm going over to the Range after supper," she said.

Mrs. Hastings drove away with Agatha. She said little to the girl during the journey, but an hour after they had reached the homestead she slipped quietly into Agatha's room. She found her reclining in a big chair sobbing bitterly. She sat down close beside her, and laid a hand upon her shoulder.

"I don't think Sally could have said anything to trouble you like this,"

she said.

It was a moment or two before Agatha turned a wet, white face toward her, and saw gentle sympathy in her eyes. There was, she felt, no cause for reticence.

"No," she said, "it was the contrast between us. She has Gregory."

Mrs. Hastings showed sympathy and comprehension. "And you have lost Harry--but I think you have not lost him altogether. We do not know that he is dead--but even if it be so, it was all that was finest in him that he offered you. It is yours still."

She sat silent a moment or two before she went on again.

"My dear, it is, perhaps, cold comfort, and I am not sure that I can make what I feel quite clear. Still, Harry was only human, and it is almost inevitable that, had it all turned out differently, he would have said and done things that would have offended you. Now he has left you a purged and stainless memory--one, I think, which must come very near to the reality. The man who went up there--for an idea, a fantastic point of honor--sloughed off every taint of the baseness that hampers most of us in doing it. It was a man changed and uplifted above all petty things by a high chivalrous purpose, who made that last grim journey."

Agatha realized the truth of this. Already Wyllard's memory had become etherealized, and she treasured it as a very fine and precious thing.

Still, though he now wore immortal laurels, that would not content her when all her human nature cried out for his bodily presence. She wanted him, as she had grown to love him, in the warm, erring flesh, and the vague, splendid vision was cold and remote. There was a barrier greater than that of cras.h.i.+ng ice and bitter water between them.

"Oh!" she cried, "I have felt that. I try to feel it always--but just now it's not enough."

She turned her face away with a bitter sob, and Mrs. Hastings, who stooped and kissed her, went out of the room. The older woman knew that the girl had broken down at last, after months of strain.

It happened that Edmonds, the mortgage-broker, drove over to the Range, and found Hawtrey waiting for him in Wyllard's room. It was early in the evening, and he could see the hired men busy outside tossing prairie hay from the wagons into the great barn. The men were half-naked and grimed with dust, but Hawtrey, who was dressed in store clothes, evidently had taken no share in their labors. When Edmonds came in he turned to the money-lender with anxiety in his face.

"Well?" he questioned brusquely.

"Market's a little stiffer," said Edmonds.

Edmonds sat down and stretched out his hand toward the cigar-box on the table, while Hawtrey waited with very evident impatience.

"Still moving up?" he asked.

Edmonds nodded. "It's the other folks' last stand," he declared. "With the wheat ripening as it's doing, the flood that will pour in before the next two months are out will sweep them off the market. I was half afraid from your note that this little rally had some weight with you, and that as one result of it you meant to cover now."