The Woman from Outside [On Swan River]. Footner Hulbert
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“Of course!” thought Stonor, with his heart sinking slowly like a water-logged branch.
“Isn’t she plucky!” said Miss Pringle enthusiastically.
“She looks it,” said Stonor, with a sidelong glance at the object of her encomium.
“To make this trip, I mean, all by herself.”
“Is it just to see the country?” asked Stonor diffidently.
“Oh, don’t you know? She’s on the staff of the Winnipeg News-Herald, and is writing up the trip for her paper.”
Stonor instantly made up his mind to spend his next leave in Winnipeg. His relief was due in October.
John Gaviller could do things in good style when he was moved to it. The table was gay with silver under candle-light. Down the centre were placed great bowls of painter’s brush, the rose of the prairies. And with the smiling ladies to grace the head of the board, it was like a glimpse of a fairer world to the men of the North. Miss Pringle was on Gaviller’s right, Miss Starling on his left. Stonor was about half-way down the table, and fortunately on the side opposite the younger lady, where he could gaze his fill.
She was wearing a pink evening dress trimmed with silver, that to Stonor’s unaccustomed eyes seemed like gossamer and moonshine. He was entranced by her throat and by the appealing loveliness of her thin arms. “How could I ever have thought a fat woman beautiful!” he asked himself. She talked with her arms and her delightfully restless shoulders. Stonor had heard somewhere that this was a sign of a warm heart. For the first time he had a view of her hair; it was dark and warm and plentiful, and most cunningly arranged.
Stonor was totally unaware of what he was eating. From others, later, he learned of the triumph of the kitchen—and all at three hours’ notice. Fortunately for him, everybody down the table was hanging on the talk at the head, so that no efforts in that direction were required of him. He was free to listen and dream.
“Somewhere in the world there is a man who will be privileged some day to sit across the table from her at every meal! Not in a crowd like this, but at their own table in their own house. Probably quite an ordinary fellow, too, certainly not worthy of his luck. With her eyes for him alone, and her lovely white arms!—While other men are batching it alone. Things are not evenly divided in this world, for sure! If that man went to hell afterwards it wouldn’t any more than square things.”
In answer to a question he heard her say: “Oh, don’t ask me about Winnipeg! All cities are so ordinary and usual! I want to hear about your country. Tell me stories about the fascinating silent places.”
“Well, as it happens,” said Gaviller, speaking slowly to give his words a proper effect, “we have a first-class mystery on hand just at present.”
“Oh, tell me all about it!” she said, as he meant her to.
“A fellow, a white man, has appeared from nowhere at all, and set himself up beside the Swan River, an unexplored stream away to the north-west of here. There he is, and no one knows how he got there. We’ve never laid eyes on him, but the Indians bring us marvellous tales of his ‘strong medicine,’ meaning magic, you know. They say he first appeared from under the great falls of the Swan River. They describe him as a sort of embodiment of the voice of the Falls, but we suspect there is a more natural explanation, because he sends into the post for the food of common humans, and gets a bundle of magazines and papers by every mail. They come addressed to Doctor Ernest Imbrie. Our poor Doc here is as jealous as a cat of his reputation as a healer!”
Gaviller was rewarded with a general laugh, in which her silvery tones were heard.
“Oh, tell me more about him!” she cried.
Of all the men who were watching her there was not one who observed any change in her face. Afterwards they remembered this with wonder. Yet there was something in her voice, her manner, the way she kept her chin up perhaps, that caused each man to think as her essential quality:
“She’s game!”
The whole story of Imbrie as they knew it was told, with all the embroidery that had been unconsciously added during the past months.
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