Read Ebook: The Girl from Keller's by Bindloss Harold

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Ebook has 2357 lines and 97829 words, and 48 pages

"Sadie Keller?" Festing exclaimed and paused, rather awkwardly. "Well, of course, I don't see why you shouldn't take her, if she wants to go."

Charnock looked at him with amusement. "As she's the chief organizer of the picnic, Sadie does want to go. For that matter, it was her suggestion that I should bring you."

"I won't be there; for one thing, I'm too busy," Festing declared, and soon afterwards got up. "It's time I started back to camp."

Leaving the homestead, he walked thoughtfully across the plain. Charnock had his faults, but he was his friend and was now in trouble. However, as he had not the pluck to face his difficulties, Festing did not see how he could help. Then he did not like Bob's taking Miss Keller to the picnic, because he had met and thought her dangerous. It was not that she had tried to flirt with him, although she had done so; he felt that if he had played up, it might have been difficult afterwards to let the matter drop. Sadie was not a silly coquette. She had a calculating bent, ambition, and a resolute character. She would not flirt with anybody who was, so to speak, not worth powder and shot.

Festing did not know how Miss Keller rated his value, but he was satisfied to remain a bachelor, and had perhaps allowed her to understand this, because she had since treated him with cold politeness. Now it looked as if she had thrown Bob some favor, which was ominous, because Sadie had generally an object. Of course, if Bob were free and content to marry a girl from the settlement, Sadie would not be a bad choice. She certainly had some virtues. But Bob was not free, and it was unthinkable that a man who had won the love of the girl whose portrait Festing knew should be satisfied with another of Sadie's type.

THE PICNIC

The picnic at Long Lake was an annual function, held as soon as the weather got warm enough, to celebrate the return of spring. Winter is long and tedious on the high Western plains, where the frost is often Arctic and little work can be done, and after sitting by the red-hot stove through the dark, cold months, the inhabitants of the scattered homesteads come out with joyful hearts to greet the sunshine. There is, however, no slow transition. Rushing winds from the North-west sweep the sky, the snow vanishes, and after a week or two, during which the prairie trails are impassable, the bleached grass dries and green blades and flowers spring from the steaming sod.

Moreover, the country round Long Lake has some beauty. To the east, it runs back, bare and level, with scarcely a tree to break the vast expanse; but to the west low undulations rise to the edge of the next tableland. Sandhills mark the summits, but the slopes are checkered with birches and poplars, and creeks of clear water flow through the hollows in the shadow of thick bluffs. There are many ponds, and here and there a shallow lake shines amidst the sweep of grass. The clear air and the distance the view commands give the landscape a distinctive charm. One has a sense of space and freedom; all the eye rests upon is clean-cut.

It was a bright morning when Charnock drove up to the door of Keller's hotel. The street was one-sided, and for the most part of its length, small, ship-lap-board houses boldly fronted the prairie. A few had shallow verandas that relieved their bareness, but the rest were frankly ugly, and in some the front was carried up level with the roof-ridge, giving them a harsh squareness of outline. A plank sidewalk, raised a foot or two above the ground, ran along the street, where the black soil was torn by wagon wheels.

There was nothing attractive about the settlement, and Charnock had once been repelled by its dreariness. He, however, liked society, and as the settlement was the only center of human intercourse, had acquired the habit of spending time there that ought to have been devoted to his farm. He enjoyed a game of pool, and to sit on the hotel veranda, bantering the loungers, was a pleasant change from driving the plow or plodding through the dust that rolled about the harrows. For all that, he knitted his brows as his light wagon lurched past the Chinese laundry and the poolroom in the next block. The place looked mean and shabby in the strong sunlight, and, with feelings he had thought dead re-awaking, he was conscious of a sharp distaste. There was a choice he must shortly make, and he knew what it would cost to take the line that might be forced on him.

When Charnock stopped, a man without a coat and with the sleeves of his fine white shirt rolled up came out. He as rather an old man and his movements were slack; his face was hard, but on the whole expressionless.

"Hallo!" he said. "Late again! The others have pulled out a quarter of an hour since."

"I saw them," Charnock answered with a languid hint of meaning. "Didn't want to join the procession and thought they might load up my rig if I got here on time."

Keller looked hard at him, as if he understood, and then asked: "Want a drink before you start?"

"No, thanks," said Charnock, with an effort; and Keller, going to the door, shouted: "Sadie!"

A girl came out on the veranda. She was a handsome girl, smartly dressed in white, with a fashionable hat that had a tall plume. Her hair and eyes were black, the latter marked by a rather hard sparkle; her nose was prominent and her mouth firm. Her face was colorless, but her skin had the clean smoothness of silk. She had a firmly lined, round figure, and her manner was easy and confident. Sadie Keller was then twenty-one years of age.

"I thought you had forgotten to come, Bob," she said with a smile.

"Then you were very foolish; you ought to have known me better," Charnock replied, and helped her into the wagon.

"Well, you do forget things," she resumed as he started the team.

"Not those I want to remember. Besides, if you really thought I had forgotten, you'd have been angry."

"How d'you know I'm not angry now?"

Charnock laughed. "When you're angry everybody in the neighborhood knows."

This was true. Sadie was young, but there was something imperious about her. She had a strong will, and when it was thwarted was subject to fits of rage. Reserve was not among her virtues, and Charnock's languid carelessness sometimes attracted and sometimes annoyed her. It marked him as different from the young men she knew and gave him what she called tone, but it had drawbacks.

"Let me have the reins; I want to drive," she said, and added as the horses trotted across the grass beside the torn-up trail: "You keep a smart team, but they're too light for much work about the farm."

"That's so. Still, you see, I like fast horses."

"They have to be paid for," Sadie rejoined.

"Very true, but I don't want to talk about such matters now. Then I've given up trying to make the farm pay. When you find a thing's impossible, it's better to let it go."

Sadie did not reply. She meant to talk about this later, but preferred to choose her time. Her education had been rudimentary, but she was naturally clever. She liked admiration, but was not to be led into foolishness by vanity. Sadie knew her value. It had for some time been obvious that a number of the young farmers who dealt at the store and frequented the hotel did so for her sake, and she was willing to extend her father's trade. In fact, she helped to manage both businesses as cleverly as she managed the customers. Her charm was largely physical, but she used it with caution. One might indulge in banter, and Sadie had a ringing laugh that young men liked, but there were limits that few who knew her overstepped. One or two had done so, but had been rebuked in a way they wished to forget. Sadie had the tricks of an accomplished coquette, but something of the heart of a prude.

The settlement got indistinct, and crossing a low rise, they drove past a birch bluff where the twigs were breaking into tiny points of green. Then they forded a creek and skirted a shallow lake, from which a flock of ducks rose and flew North in a straggling wedge. Sandhills gleamed on the ridges, tall cranes stalked about the hollows, and when the team, laboring through the loose soil, crossed an elevation one could see the plain roll back into the far distance. It was sharp-cut to the horizon; only the varying color that changed from soft blue to white and yellow in the foreground helped the eye to gage its vast extent. The snow had bleached the grass, which glittered like silver in the strong sunlight.

A boisterous wind from the North-west drove white-edged clouds across the sky, but the air was soft with a genial warmth that drew earthy smells from the drying sod. In places, an emerald flush had begun to spread across the withered grass and small flowers like crocuses were pushing through. The freshness and hint of returning life reacted on Charnock, and stirred his blood when he glanced at his companion. He felt her physical allurement as he had not felt it before, but now and then he resolutely looked away. Sadie had shown him marked favor, but there was much he might lose.

She would not have charmed him when he first came to the prairie with romantic hopes and vague ambitions. He had been fastidious then, and the image of a very different girl occupied his heart. Even now he knew the other stood for all that was best in life; for tender romances, and sweetness, and high purpose. Helen had gracious qualities he had once half-reverently admired. She loved pictures and books and music, and was marked by a calm serenity that was very different from Sadie's restless force. But it looked as if he had lost her, and Sadie, who could break a horse and manage a hotel, was nearer his level. Yet he hesitated; he must choose one of two paths, and when he had chosen could not turn back.

"You don't talk much," Sadie remarked at length. "Guess you must be thinking about your mortgage."

"I was, in a way. It was rather useless and very rude. However, I won't think of it again until somebody makes me."

"That's a way of yours. You think too late."

"I'm afraid I sometimes do so," Charnock admitted. "Anyhow, to-day, I'm not going to think at all."

Sadie noted the reckless humor with which he began to talk, but she led him on, and they engaged in cheerful banter until Long Lake began to gleam among the woods ahead. Charnock skirted the trees and pulled up where a number of picketed teams and rigs stood near the water's edge. Farther along, a merry party was gathering wood to build a fire, and Charnock did not find Sadie alone again for some hours after he helped her down.

In summer, Long Lake has no great beauty and shrinks, leaving a white saline crust on its wide margin of sun-baked mud, but it is a picturesque stretch of water when the snow melts in spring and the reflections of the birches quiver on the smooth belt along its windward edge. Farther out, the shadows of flying clouds chase each other across the flashing surface. Two or three leaky canoes generally lie among the trees, and in the afternoon Charnock dragged one down, and helping Sadie on board, paddled up the lake.

As they crept round a point flocks of ducks left the water and the air throbbed with a beat of wings that gradually died away. The fire, round which the others sat, was out of sight, and the rustle of the tossing birches emphasized the quietness. Charnock let the canoe drift, and Sadie looked up at him from her low seat among the wagon robes he had brought.

"What are you going to do about your farm?" she asked.

"I don't know yet, and don't see why I should bore you with my troubles."

"Pshaw!" said Sadie. "You want to put the thing off; but you know you can't."

Charnock made a gesture of humorous resignation. "Very well! I expect I won't be able to carry on the farm."

"No," said Sadie, thoughtfully, "I don't think you could. There are men who would be able, but not you."

"I dare say you're right, but you're not flattering," Charnock rejoined with a smile.

Sadie gave him a steady look. "Your trouble is you laugh when you ought to set your lips and get busy. One has got to hustle in Canada."

"I have hustled. In fact, it's hustling that has brought me low. If I hadn't spent my money trying to break fresh land, I wouldn't have been so deep in debt."

"And you'd have had more time to loaf about the settlement?"

"On the whole, I don't think that's kind. If I hadn't come to the settlement, I wouldn't have seen you, and that's about the only comfort I have left."

A touch of color crept into Sadie's face, but her thoughtful look did not change.

"Well," she said, "I'd surely have liked you to make good, and don't know that we mightn't have got the mortgage held over; but it wouldn't have been much use. You'd have started again and then got tired and not have stayed with it." She spread out her hands impatiently. "That's the kind of man you are!"

"I'm afraid it's true," Charnock admitted. "But I hope you like me all the same."

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