By Right of Purchase. Bindloss Harold
men have more, or desire it, on the prairie, and fewer still have less. At the end of the meal, when Jake had cleared away, Carrie Leland looked up questioningly at her husband, who sat opposite her beside the crackling stove. There was nobody else in the big, bare room.
"You haven't told me why it is not convenient for me to have Ada Heaton here just now," she said.
"You want her very much?" and again the man glanced at her wistfully.
"Yes," said Carrie, "of course I do. I must have somebody to talk to."
Leland made a gesture of vague appeal. "I suppose it's only natural, though I had 'most dared to hope you might be content for a little with my company. Anyway, we won't let that count. Couldn't you bring Mrs. Annersly out? I like her, and she told me that if I asked her she would come and stay a year. Then there's your younger sister."
"You don't suppose that Lily would come to live here?" and there was something in her smile that jarred upon the man.
"Well," he said, "I'm sorry. She was rather nice to me. Is there nobody else you could think of?"
"One would almost fancy that you were trying to get away from the question. It is why you don't want me to bring Ada Heaton here."
Leland leaned forward a little, and laid his hand upon her arm. "Won't you let it rest to please me? I haven't asked you very much."
The girl was almost tempted to do so, but, unfortunately, she had some notion of what was influencing him, and resented it.
"No," she said coldly. "I really think I ought to know."
"Then I'm sorry, but it wouldn't suit me to have Mrs. Heaton here at all."
"Why?" and an ominous red spot appeared in the girl's cheek as she shook off his arm.
Leland stood up, and, leaning upon the chair-back, looked down at her. Perhaps he felt it gave him an advantage, and he would need it in the struggle which was evidently impending. He had never faced an angry woman before, and he shrank from it now, but not sufficiently to desist from what he felt he had to do.
"I wonder if you have ever asked yourself why Mrs. Heaton is in Chicago when her home is in London," he said. "I can't believe that she told you."
"Ah," – and Carrie moved her head so that he could see the sparkle in her eyes – "you have heard those tales, and believed them – about a relative of mine. Presumably, you have heard nothing about Captain Heaton?"
"It was one of your people who told me. They said the man was short of temper. So are a good many of us; and, it seems, he had some reason. Still, there's rather more against Mrs. Heaton than that she's not living with her own husband. Knowing you meant to ask her here, I made inquiries."
The girl turned towards him with anger and contempt in her face, which was almost colourless now, although she fancied that he knew rather more than she did about the recent doings of the lady in question. The pride of family was especially strong in her, as it occasionally is in cases where there is very little to warrant it.
"Your time was well employed," she said. "You who live here with your horses and cattle presume to decide how people of our station should spend their lives."
"There is one thing, at least, expected of a woman who is married; it's the necessary foundation of civilised society. And the woman you want to bring here has openly disregarded it. You must have heard something of the trouble between her and her husband in London, but I can't quite think you know how she came to be in Chicago."
As a matter of fact, Carrie Leland did not know. Still, she would not ask the man, who had apparently laid firm hands upon his temper, and was looking at her appealingly. It was unfortunate that she only remembered he had presumed to cast a slur upon one of her relations, and was, in her opinion, very far beneath her. She refused to answer, and Leland's face grew grim.
"Well," he said, "you are in almost every way your own mistress, but there are points on which what I say stands. This house was built for my mother. I have brought my wife home to it now, and Mrs. Heaton does not enter its door."
Carrie rose and faced him, imperious, but at last dangerously cold in her anger.
"Your wife!" she said. "Could you have expected that I should ever be more than that in name to you?"
The veins showed swollen on the man's forehead as he looked at her, and a dark flush crept into his bronzed cheek.
"Madam," he said, "now you have gone that far, you have got to tell me exactly what you mean."
"It should be quite plain. You could buy me. It sounds absurd, of course, and a trifle theatrical, but it is just what took place, and there are no doubt many of us for sale. Isn't that alone sufficient to make me hate you? Can't you realise the sickening humiliation of it, and did you suppose you could buy my love as well?"
Leland made her a little inclination which, though it was the last thing she had expected just then, undoubtedly became him. "I had 'most ventured to hope that you might give it me by-and-bye," he said.
His restraint did not serve him. The girl realised that she was in the wrong, but she had failed in her desire to look down on him. This she naturally felt was another grievance against him. She had the old disdain of those who own the land for those who till it, and, although in this man's case, the contempt she strove to feel seemed out of place, it was horribly humiliating to recognise that she was wholly in his hands.
"To you?" she said, with a bitter laugh that brought the dark flush to his face again.
Leland laid his hand on her shoulder and gripped it hard.
"I have, perhaps, no great reason for setting too high a value on myself," he said. "What I am you know, but, if you must have plain talk, there were two men made the bargain that disposed of you. It cost me a big share of my possessions to satisfy your father, but he showed no unwillingness to take my cheque, and he would have taken Aylmer's could he have raised him high enough. Who was the lowest down, the Western farmer, who, at least, meant to be kind to you, or Branscombe Denham, who was willing to sell his daughter to the highest bidder? Still, you were right. It was, in one way, about the meanest thing I ever did. The blood was in my face when I made my offer – and your father smiled. By the Lord, if I'd made that proposition to any hard-up wheat-grower between here and Calgary, he'd have whipped me from his door."
The girl had plenty of courage, but she was almost afraid of him now, for there was a strength and grimness in his bronzed face which she had never seen in that of any Denham, and the tightening grip of his ploughman's fingers bruised her shoulder cruelly. Perhaps unconsciously, he shook her a little in a gust of passion, and she set her lips hard to check the cry she would not have uttered had he beaten her.
"Now," he said, "in any case, you belong to me. That has to be remembered always. How are we to go on? What is it to be?"
Carrie contrived to smile sardonically. "Oh," she said, "sit down, and try to be rational. All this is a trifle ridiculous."
Leland dropped his hand, and, when she sat down, leaned upon the back of the other chair facing her.
"Well?" he said.
"It seems to me that we must quietly try to come to an understanding once for all to-night. In the first place, why did you wish to marry me?"
Leland set his lips for a moment. It would have been a relief just then to tell her that it was to save her from Aylmer, but this appeared a brutality to which he could not force himself, for, in spite of what she had told him, he could not be sure that it had been his only reason. Her shrinking from him, painful to him as it was, nevertheless had its attraction.
"I believe I said that you were the most beautiful woman I had, at least, ever spoken to," he said. "I was a lonely man, and it seemed to me I might, perhaps, do big things some day, with a woman of your kind to teach me what I did not know. That was part of it, but I think there was more. It was a hard life and a bare one here, and I had a fancy that you could show me how much I might have that I was missing. A smile would have helped me through my difficulties; a word or two when one had to choose between the mean and right, and the knowledge that there was some one who believed in me, would have made another and gentler