Hawtrey's Deputy Part 29

"Well," said Sproatly, with an air of reflection, "in some respects, I suppose I am. In others, the thing's galling. You have to report who you've called upon, and, if you couldn't do business, why they bought somebody else's machines. If you can't get a farmer to take you in you have to put up at a hotel. There's no more camping in a birch bluff under your waggon. Besides, you have to wear store clothes."

Hastings glanced at Winifred, and Agatha fancied she understood what was in his mind.

"Some folks would sooner sleep in a hotel," he said, with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Then," said Sproatly, decisively, "they don't know very much. They're the kind of men who'd spend an hour every morning putting their clothes on, and they haven't found out that there's no comfort in any garment until you've had to sew two or three flour bag patches on to it. Then think of the splendid freeness of the other thing. You make your supper when you want, and just how you like it, when you put up in a bluff, and no tea tastes as good as the kind you drink with the wood smoke in it out of a blackened can. You can hear the little birch leaves and the gra.s.ses whispering about you when you lie down at night, and you drive on in the glorious freshness--just when it pleases you--when morning comes. Now the Company have the whole route and programme plotted out for me. They write me letters demanding most indelicately why I haven't done this and that."

Winifred looked at him sharply. "Civilisation," she said, "implies responsibility. You can't live just how you like without it being detrimental to the community."

"Oh yes," said Sproatly with a rueful gesture, "it implies no end of giving up. You have to fall into line, and that's why I kept outside it just as long as I could. I don't like standing in a rank, and," he glanced down at his clothing, "I've an inborn objection to wearing uniform."

Agatha laughed as she caught Hastings's eye. She fancied that Sproatly would be sorry for his candour afterwards, but she understood what he was feeling to some extent. It was a revolt against cramping customs and conventionalities, and she partly sympathised with it, though she knew that such revolts are dangerous. Even in the West, those who cannot lead must march in column with the rank and file or bear the consequences of their futile mutiny. It is a hard truth that no man can live as he pleases.

"Restraint," said Winifred, "is a wholesome thing, but it's one most of the men I have met are singularly deficient in. That's why they can't be left alone but must be driven, as they are, in companies. It's their own fault if they now and then find it a little humiliating."

There was a faint gleam in her eyes at which Sproatly apparently took warning, for he said no more upon that subject, and they talked about other matters until he took his departure an hour or two later. It was next afternoon when he appeared again, and Mrs. Hastings smiled at Agatha as he and Winifred drove away together.

"Thirty miles is a long way to drive in the frost. I suppose you have noticed that she calls him Jim?" she said. "Anyway, there's a good deal of very genuine ability in that young man. He isn't altogether wild."

"His appearance rather suggested it when I first met him," said Agatha with a laugh. "Was it a pose?"

"No," said her companion reflectively. "I think one could call it a reaction, and it's probable that some very worthy people in the Old Country are to blame for it. Sproatly is not the only young man who has suffered from having too many rules and conventions crammed down his throat. In fact, they're rather plentiful."

Agatha said nothing further, for the little girls appeared just then, and it was not until the next afternoon that she and Mrs. Hastings were alone together again. Then as they drove across the prairie wrapped in the heavy waggon robes her companion spoke of the business they had in hand.

"Gregory must keep those men," she said. "There's no doubt that Harry meant to do it, and it would be horribly unfair to turn them loose now when there's absolutely nothing going on. Besides, Tom Moran is a man I'm specially sorry for. As I told you, he left a young wife and a very little child behind him when he came out here."

"One would wonder why he did it," said Agatha. "He had to. There seems to be a notion in the Old Country that we earn our dollars easily, but it's very wrong. We'll take that man's case as an example.

He has a little, desolate holding up in the bush of Ontario, a hole chopped out of the forest studded all over with sawn-off fir-stumps, with a little, two-roomed log shack on it. In all probability there isn't a settlement within two or three leagues of the spot. Now, as a rule, a place of that kind won't produce enough to keep a man for several years after he has partially cleared it, and unless he can earn something in the meanwhile he must give it up. Moran, it seems, got heavily into debt with the nearest storekeeper, and had to choose between selling the place up or coming out here where wages are higher.

Well, you can probably imagine what it must be to the woman who stayed behind in the desolate bush, seeing n.o.body for weeks together, though I've no doubt that she'd bear it uncomplainingly believing that her husband would come back with enough to clear the debt."

Agatha could imagine it, and a certain indignation against Gregory crept into her heart. She had once liked to think of him as pitiful and chivalrous, and now, it seemed, he was quite willing that this woman should make her sacrifice in vain.

"But why have you taken the trouble to impress this on--me?" she asked.

Her companion smiled. "I want you to plead that woman's cause.

Gregory may do what you ask him gracefully. That would be much the nicest way out of it."

"The nicest way?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Hastings, with a trace of dryness, "there is another one. Gregory is going to keep Tom Moran, anyway. Harry has one or two friends in this neighbourhood who feel it more or less of an obligation on them to maintain his credit."

Agatha felt the blood rise to her face, but it was not her companion she was angry with. It was an unpleasant thing to admit, but she fancied that Gregory might yield to judicious pressure when he would not be influenced by either compa.s.sion or a sense of equity. It also flashed upon her that had Mrs. Hastings believed that she still retained any tenderness for the man she would not have spoken as she had done. The whole situation was horribly embarra.s.sing, but there was courage in her.

"Well," she said simply, "I will speak to him."

They said nothing more until they approached the Range, and as they drove by the outbuildings Agatha glanced about her curiously. It occurred to her that the homestead did not look quite the same as it had done when Wyllard had been there. A waggon stood near the strawpile without one wheel. A door of the barn hung awkwardly open in a manner which suggested that it needed mending, and the snow had blown inside the building. There was a gap in the side of one sod and pole structure which should evidently have been repaired, and all this and several other things she noticed jarred upon her. They suggested slackness and indifference. Then she saw Mrs. Hastings purse her lips up.

"There is a change in the place already," she said.

They got down in another minute or two, and when they entered the house the grey-haired Swedish woman greeted them moodily. She seemed to notice the glance Mrs. Hastings cast around her, and her manner became deprecatory.

"I can't keep things straight now. It is not the same," she said.

Mrs. Hastings asked if Hawtrey was in, and hearing that he was turned to Agatha. "Go along and talk to him. I've something to say to Mrs.

Nansen," she said.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE PRIOR CLAIM.

It was with confused feelings among which a sense of repugnance predominated that Agatha walked towards Hawtrey's room. She was not one of the women who take pleasure in pointing out another person's duty, for while she had discovered that this task is apparently an easy one to some people she was quite aware that a duty usually looks much more burdensome when it is laid upon one's self. Indeed, she was conscious just then that one might be shortly thrust upon her which she would find it very hard to bear, and she became troubled with a certain compunction as she remembered how she had of late persistently driven all thought of it out of her mind.

There was no doubt that she was still pledged to Gregory, and that she had loved him once. Both facts must be admitted, and it seemed to her that if he insisted she must marry him. Deep down in her there was an innate sense of right and honesty, and she realised that the fact that he was not the man she had once imagined him to be did not release her.

In the meanwhile, it was clear that if he was about to commit a cruel and unjustifiable action she was the one person of all others whose part it was to restrain him.

The colour was a little plainer in her face than usual when she quietly entered the room where he lay, pipe in hand, in a lounge chair, and, for it seemed that he did not immediately notice her, his att.i.tude of languid ease irritated her. There were, as she had seen, several things which should evidently have had some claim on his attention outside. A litter of letters and papers lay upon a little table at his side, but the fact that he could not reach them as he lay was suggestive. Then he rose, and came forward with outstretched hand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "It seemed that he did not immediately notice her."]

"I didn't hear you," he said. "This is a pleasure I scarcely antic.i.p.ated."

Agatha sat down in the chair he drew out for her near the stove, and he seemed to notice that she glanced at the papers on the table, for he laughed.

"Bills, and things of that kind. They've been worrying me for a week or two," he said. Then he seized the litter, and bundling it together flung it into an open drawer, which he shut with a snap. "Anyway, that's the last of them for to-day. I'm awfully glad you drove over."

Agatha smiled. The action was so characteristic of the man. She had once found no fault with Gregory's careless habits, and his way of thrusting a difficulty into the background and making light of it had appealed to her. It had suggested his ability to straighten out the trouble when it appeared advisable. Now, she said, she would not be absurdly hypercritical, and he had, as it happened, given her the lead that she desired.

"I should have fancied that you would have had to give them more attention as wheat is going down," she said.

Hawtrey looked at her with an air of reproach. "It must be nearly three weeks since I have seen you, and now you expect me to talk of farming." He made a whimsically rueful gesture. "If you quite realised the situation it would be about the last thing you would ask me to do."

Agatha was a little astonished to remember that three weeks had actually elapsed since she had last met him, and they had only exchanged a word or two then. He had certainly not obtruded himself upon her, for which she was grateful.

"n.o.body is talking about anything except the fall in prices just now,"

she persisted. "I suppose it affects you, too?"

The man, who seemed to accept this as a rebuff, looked at her rather curiously, and then laughed.

"It must be admitted that it does. In fact, I've been acquiring parsimonious habits and worrying myself about expenses lately. They have to be kept down somehow, and that's a kind of thing I never took kindly to."

"You feel it a greater responsibility when you're managing somebody else's affairs?" suggested Agatha, who was still waiting her opportunity.

"Well," said Hawtrey, in whom there was, after all, a certain honesty, "that's not quite the only thing that has some weight with me. You see, I'm not altogether disinterested. I get a certain percentage--on the margin--after everything is paid, and I want it to be a big one.

Things are rather tight just now, and the wretched mortgage on my place is crippling me."