Hawtrey's Deputy. Bindloss Harold
foreground in ochre and burnished copper waves, it's more wonderful still. One sees the fulfilment of the promise, and takes courage."
"Then," said Agatha, who had scarcely suspected him of a capacity for such flights as this, "what is there to shrink from?"
"In the case of a small farmer's wife, the constant, never-slackening strain. There's no hired assistance; she must clean the house, and wash, and cook – though it's not unusual for the men to wash the plates."
The girl was evidently not much impressed, for she laughed.
"Does Gregory wash the plates?" she asked.
Wyllard's eyes twinkled. "When Sproatly won't," he said. "Still, in a general way they only do it once a week."
"Ah," said Agatha, "I can imagine Gregory hating it. As a matter of fact, I like him for it."
"Then she must bake, and mend her husband's clothes. Indeed, it's not unusual for her to mend for the hired man too. Besides that, there are always odds and ends of tasks, but the time when you feel the strain most is in the winter. Then you sit at night, shivering, as a rule, beside the stove in an almost empty log-walled room, reading a book you have probably read three or four times before. Outside, the frost is Arctic; you can hear the roofing shingles crackle now and then; and you wake up when the fire burns low. There's no life, no company, rarely a new face, and if you go to a dance or supper somewhere, perhaps once a month, you ride back on a bob-sled frozen almost stiff beneath the robes."
"Still," said Agatha, "that does not last."
The man understood her. "Oh!" he said, "one makes progress – that is, if one can stand the strain – but, as the one way of doing it is to sow for a larger harvest and break fresh sod every year, there can be no slackening down in the meanwhile. Every dollar must be guarded and ploughed into the soil again."
He broke off, feeling that he had done all that could reasonably be expected of him, and Agatha asked one question.
"A woman who didn't slacken could make the struggle easier for the man?"
"Yes," said Wyllard simply, "in every way. Still, she would have a great deal to bear."
Agatha's face softened. "Ah," she said, "she would not grudge the effort in the case of one she loved."
Then she looked up again with a smile. "I wonder," she added, "if you really thought I should flinch."
"When I first heard of it, I thought it quite likely. Then when I read your letter my doubts vanished."
He saw he had not been judicious, for there was, for the first time, a trace of hardness in the girl's expression.
"He showed you that?" she asked.
"One small part of it," said Wyllard. "I want to say that when I saw this house, and how you seemed fitted to it, my misgivings about Gregory's decision troubled me once more. Now" – and he made a little impressive gesture – "they have vanished altogether, and they'll never come back again."
He spoke as he felt. This girl, he fancied, would feel the strain; but it seemed to him that she had strength enough to bear it cheerfully. In spite of her daintiness, she was one who, in time of stress, could be depended on. He often remembered afterwards how they had sat together in the little, luxuriously furnished room, she leaning back, with the soft light on her delicately tinted face, in her big, low chair. In the meanwhile she said nothing, and by and bye he looked up at her.
"It's curious that I had your photograph ever so long, and never thought of showing it Gregory," he said.
Agatha smiled. "I suppose it is," she admitted. "After all, except that it might have been a relief to Major Radcliffe if he had met you sooner, the fact that you didn't show it Gregory doesn't seem of any particular consequence."
Wyllard was not quite sure of this. He had thought about this girl often, and had certainly been conscious of a curious thrill of satisfaction when he had met her at the stepping-stones a few days earlier. That feeling had also suddenly disappeared when he had learned that she was his comrade's promised wife. He had, however, during the last hour or two made up his mind to think no more of her.
"Well," he said, "the next thing is to arrange for Mrs. Hastings to meet you in London, or, perhaps, at the Grange. Her husband is a Canadian, a man of education, who has quite a large homestead not far from Gregory's. Her folks are people of station in Montreal, and I feel sure that you'll like her."
They decided that he was to ask Mrs. Hastings to stay a few days at the Grange, and then he looked at the girl somewhat diffidently.
"She suggests going in a fortnight," he said.
Agatha smiled at him. "Then," she said, "I must not keep her waiting."
She rose, and they went back together to join their hostess.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TRAVELLING COMPANION
A grey haze, thickened by the smoke of the city, drove out across the water when the Scarrowmania lay in the Mersey, with her cable hove short, and the last of the flood tide gurgling against her bows. A trumpeting blast of steam swept high aloft from beside her squat funnel, and the splash of the slowly turning paddles of the couple of steam tugs that lay alongside mingled with the din it made. A gangway from one of them led to the Scarrowmania's forward deck, and a stream of frowsy humanity that had just been released from overpacked emigrant boarding-houses poured up it. There were apparently representatives of all peoples and languages among that unkempt horde – Britons, Scandinavians, Teutons, Italians, Russians, Poles – and they moved on in forlorn apathy, like cattle driven to the slaughter. One wondered, from the look of them, how they had raised their passage money, and how many years' bitter self-denial it had cost them to provide for their transit to the land of promise.
At the head of the gangway stood the steamboat doctors, for the Scarrowmania was taking out an unusual number of passengers, and there were two of them. They were immaculate in blue uniform, and looked very clean and English by contrast with the mass of frowsy aliens. Beside them stood another official, presumably acting on behalf of the Dominion Government, though there were few restrictions imposed upon Canadian immigration then, nor for that matter did anybody trouble much about the comfort of the steerage passengers. Though they have altered all that latterly, each steamer, in a general way, carried as many as she could hold.
As the stream poured out of the gangway, the doctor glanced at each new comer's face, and then seizing him by the wrist uncovered it. Since this took him two or three seconds, one could have fancied that he either possessed peculiar powers, or that the test was a somewhat inefficient one. Then he looked at the official, who made a sign, and the man moved on.
In the meanwhile a group of first-class passengers leaning on the thwart-ship rails close by looked on, with complacent satisfaction with the fact that they were born in a different station, or half-contemptuous pity, as their temperament varied. Among them stood Mrs. Hastings, Miss Winifred Rawlinson, and Agatha. The latter noticed that Wyllard sat on a hatch forward near the head of the gangway, with a pipe in his hand. She drew Mrs. Hastings's attention to it.
"Whatever is Mr. Wyllard doing there?" she asked.
Her companion, who was wrapped in furs, for there was a sting in the east wind, smiled at her.
"That," she said, "is more than I can tell you; but Harry Wyllard seems to find an interest in what other folks would consider most unpromising things, and, what's more to the purpose, he's rather addicted to taking a hand in. It's a habit that costs him something now and then."
Agatha asked nothing further. She was interested in Wyllard, but she was at the moment more interested in the faces of those who swarmed on board. She wondered what they had endured in the lands that had cast them out, and what they might still have to bear. It seemed to her that the murmur of their harsh voices went up in a great protest, an inarticulate cry of sorrow. While she looked on the doctor held back a long-haired man who was following a haggard woman shuffling in broken boots. He drew him aside, and when, after he had apparently consulted with the other official, two seamen hustled the man towards a second gangway that led to the tug, the woman raised a wild, despairing cry. It,