Lorimer of the Northwest. Harold Bindloss
and the air was probably known in France three hundred years ago. Still, weather-beaten men, and fair women who were considerably less numerous, swept light-heartedly round to it, and when, declining refreshment then, we found a corner, Harry and I sat staring with all our eyes at the scene before us.
After the monotonous labor of the past two years the swish of light dresses and the rhythmic patter of feet, with the merry faces and joyous laughter, moved me strangely. All this seemed to belong to a different world from the one in which we had been living, and I wondered whether any of those dainty daughters of Carrington would deign to dance with me. They might have been transplanted like English roses from some walled garden at home, and their refined beauty had grown to a fuller blossom on the prairie. Still, I knew they would have faded in the dry heat of the dwellings in an Eastern town.
“How do those French-Canadians learn to play like that?” said Harry. “No one taught them; inherited it, I suppose. I know that air; it’s very old, and he’s taking liberties with it masterfully; now it’s like the cypress singing in the big coulée. Of course, it wasn’t learned in one generation, but why does a waltz of that kind unsettle one 69 so, with a suggestion of ancient sorrow sighing through its gladness? But I’m forgetting, and vaporing again. We are ox-drivers, you and I.”
I nodded silently, for I had not the gift of ready speech, and it was Harry who most often put my thoughts into words for me. Then I grew intent as he said:
“There she is. Who!—Miss Carrington—is there any one else to look at when she is in the room?”
Grace floated past us dressed as I had somewhere seen her before and could not recall it, though the memory puzzled me. Neither do I know what she wore, beyond that the fabric’s color was of the ruddy gold one sees among the stems of ripening grain, while wheat ears nestled between her neck and shoulder, and rustled like barley rippling to the breeze, as with the music embodied in each movement of her form she whirled by us on Ormond’s arm. He looked as he did when I last saw him, placidly good-humored, with the eyeglass dangling this time loosely by its cord.
Then I drew in my breath as the music ceased, and Raymond Lyle approached us, saying: “As usual, men are at a discount, but you have not had a dance, and most of the others have. Come, and I’ll find you partners. Ah, if you are not tired, Miss Carrington, will you take pity on an old friend of yours? I have many duties, and you will excuse me.”
He withdrew quickly, and Grace smiled. “One must never be too tired to dance with an old friend at a prairie feast,” she said, running her pencil through the initials on a program which had traveled several hundred miles from Winnipeg. Then I felt uncomfortable, for I guessed the letters R. L. represented my host, who had good-naturedly made way for me. It was a kindly thought, but Raymond Lyle, who was a confirmed bachelor living under his self-willed sister’s wing, had evidently guessed my interest and 70 remembered the incident of the jibbing team. It was a square dance, and Harry with a laughing damsel formed my vis-à-vis, but having eyes only for my partner I saw little but a moving mixture of soft colors and embroidered deerskin, for some of the men were dressed in prairie fashion. I felt her warm breath on my neck, the shapely form yielding to my arm, and it was small wonder that I lost myself in the glamour of it, until with the crash of a final chord from the piano the music stopped.
“And you have not danced for four years!” she said as I led her through the press. “Well, it has all come back to you, and out here there is so much more than dancing for a man to do. Yes, you may put down another, there toward the end, and fill in the next one two. I have been looking forward to a quiet talk with you.”
I was left alone with pulses throbbing. There was very little in what she said, but her face showed a kindly interest in our doings, and it was no small thing that the heiress of Carrington should place me on the level of an old friend. Harry was chatting merrily with his late partner, who seemed amused at him, and this was not surprising, for Harry’s honest heart was somewhat strangely united with a silver tongue, and all women took kindly to him. I found other partners and he did the same, so it was some time before we met again, and I remember remarking that all this gaiety and brightness seemed unreal after our quarters at Fairmead, and ended somewhat lamely:
“I suppose it’s out of mere pity she danced with me. As you said, we are of the soil, earthy, and a princess of the prairie is far beyond our sphere. Yet she seemed genuinely pleased to see me. If it were even you, Harry!”
He laughed as he pointed to a large mirror draped in cypress, saying, “Look into that. You are slow at understanding certain matters, Ralph. Not seen the whole of 71 your noble self in a glass for two years? Neither have I. And it hasn’t dawned upon you that you came out in the transition stage—a grub, or shall we say a chrysalis? No, don’t wrinkle your forehead; it’s only an allegory. Now you have come out of the chrysalis—see?”
Part of this was certainly true, for at Coombs’ we had the broken half of a hand-glass to make our simple toilet, and at Fairmead a whole one of some four inches diameter which cost two bits, tin-backed, at the store, and I remember saying that it was an extravagance. Now I stared into the long glass, standing erect in my one gala garment of fringed deerskin.
“A little too bull-necked,” Harry remarked smiling, “but, except for Raymond Lyle, the stiffest-framed man in the room. Solid and slow from shoulders to ankles; head—shall we say that of a gladiator, or a prize-fighter? Good gracious, Ralph, remember you’re in a ball room, not trying on your trousseau.”
His remarks were not exactly flattering, but for the first time I felt glad to stand a strong man among those who had other advantages behind them, though I fumed inwardly when presently I heard Harry’s partner say:
“What a curious man your friend is! I saw him standing before the big glass actually admiring himself.”
And Harry had the mendacity to assure her that this was a favorite habit of mine.
Afterward I chatted for a time with the giver of the feast. We had much in common, for he was a stalwart plainly spoken man whose chief concern was the improvement of his holding, and from what he said it was clear that taking season by season his bank account increased but little, while he mentioned that several of his neighbors lost a certain sum yearly. There are two ways of farming in the West, and it seemed that after all Harry and I had chosen 72 the better, the creeping on from acre to acre, living frugally, and doing oneself whatever is needed, then investing each dollar hardly saved in better implements.
Nevertheless, I saw that the men of Carrington who followed the other plan, spending and hiring freely, were doing a good work for the country, because even if they lost a small sum each year most of them could afford it, and their expenses would have been much greater at home. They helped to maintain a demand for good horses and the product of clever workmen’s skill; they supported the storekeepers of the wooden towns; and the poorer settlers could always earn a few dollars by working for them. So it dawned upon me that it is well for the nation that some are content to take their pleasure, as these men did, in an occupation that brought them small profit, sinking their surplus funds for the benefit of those who will follow them. Neither does the mother country lose, because she reaps the fruit of their labors in the shape of cheap and wholesome food.
At last the conversation drifted around to the founder of Carrington.
“An austere man,” said Lyle, “and he’s somewhat different from the rest of us—ready to gather in wherever he can, very hard to get ahead of at a deal; but if he is keen it’s all for the sake of his daughter. There are two things Carrington is proud of, one is this settlement, and the other his heiress. He’s not exactly an attractive personage, but there are whispers that some painful incident in her mother’s life soured him, and one learns to respect him. His word is better than most other men’s bond, and if his will is like cast iron his very determination often saves trouble in the end.”
Silence succeeded, for bold chords of music held the assembly still, and I saw Harry seated at the piano, which apparently had escaped serious damage in its long transit 73 across the prairie. This was a surprise, for I had not suspected Harry of musical proficiency. There was power in his