CHAPTER III
IN Keble’s new car, purchased with a recent birthday cheque from the family, Louise was driving swiftly over the lumpy road that wound its way down the hill, beside the river, across sage plains, around fields of alfalfa, toward the distant Valley. There was an autumn crispness in the air, and the rising sun made the world bigger and bigger every minute. She rejoiced in the freshness of the earth; and the fun of goading a powerful motor over deserted, treacherous roads made her chuckle. Most of all, she was excited by the element of adventure in the journey. She welcomed most things in life that savored of adventure. What mattered chiefly to her was that she should go forward. And this morning’s exploit was a leap. If she were ever to get out of her present impasse it would be thanks to the unknown woman she was hastening to meet.
As she swung into the long main street, passing the post office and the drug-store, the bank, the hotel, and the hospital, scattering greetings among stragglers, she was conscious of the wide-eyed interest in her smart blue car. The inhabitants made capital of their intimacy with her. In the old days she was “Doc. Bruneau’s girl;” nowadays she was, in addition, the wife of a “rich dude” and a liberal buyer of groceries and hardware.
“As though that made me any different!” she reflected, and drew the car up before the doctor’s white-washed garden fence, sending a bright hallo to an old schoolmate, Minnie Hopper, whom she had once passionately cherished for their similar taste in hair-ribbons and peppermint sticks, and who was now Mrs. Otis Swigger, wife of Oat, the proprietor of “The Canada House” and the adjoining “shaving parlor and billiard saloon.” For Minnie marriage was nine-tenths of life. She was the mother of two chalky babies; she had an “imitation mahogany bedroom set”; and her ambition was to live in Witney, beyond the mountain pass, where there was a “moving picture palace” and a railway station.
Even Keble,—Louise pursued the thought as the gate clicked behind her,—seemed to think marriage nine-tenths of life. For her!
She was burning with curiosity.
A tall, lithe, solid young woman was standing before a heaped bookcase,—a fair-skinned, clear-eyed woman of thirty-two or three, with a broad forehead over which a soft, shining, flat mass of reddish-brown hair was drawn. She wore a rough silk shirt with a brown knitted cravat; a fawn colored skirt, severely simple but so cunningly cut that it assumed new lines with the slightest motion of her body; brown stockings and stout brown golf shoes of an indefinable smartness.
Louise had never seen a woman so all-of-a-piece, and of a piece so rare. As a rule, in encountering new personalities, she was first of all sensitive to signs of intelligence, or its lack. She could not have said whether this person were excessively clever or excessively the reverse. It was the woman’s composure that baffled her. The wide-set grey eyes and the relaxed but firm lips gave no clue. She swiftly guessed that in this woman’s calculations there was a scale of values that virtually ignored cleverness, as such; that cleverness was to her merely a chance intensity that co-existed with other more important qualities in accordance with which she made her classifications, if she bothered to make classifications; and something suggested that for this woman classifying processes were automatic. What her mechanical standards of judgment were, there was no gauging: degrees of gentility, perhaps. That was what Louise would have to learn.
The lips, without parting, formed themselves into a reassuring smile, which had the contrary effect of making Louise acutely conscious of a necessity to be correct, of marshaling all the qualities in herself that had aroused approbation in the most discriminating people she had known.
The stranger replaced a book she had been inspecting and took a step in Louise’s direction. Louise shook herself, as if chidingly, and let her natural directness dispel the momentary awkwardness. She went forward quickly with outstretched hand.
“You are Miss Cread, of course. I am Mrs. Eveley. I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting overnight here.”
“Your father has been more than hospitable. He delighted me last night with his quaint ideas.”
“Oh dear,—about priests and things?” Louise was inclined to deprecate her father’s penchant for assailing the church in whatever hearing.
Miss Cread laughed. “Partly. I dote on this little house, and all its things.”
“Papa suggests that after he dies I transport it to a quai on the left bank of the Seine in Paris and knock out the front wall. He says it would make a perfect book stall. . . . Papa once won a scholarship to study medicine in Paris. It rather spoiled him for a life in these wilds. I do hope you won’t die of boredom with us. I’ve never been to Paris. Indeed I’ve never been farther than Winnipeg, and that seemed thousands of miles. Of course you’ve been abroad.”
“A great deal.”
“You’re not a bit American.” Louise was thinking of camping parties that sometimes penetrated the Valley in cars decorated with banners bearing the device “Idaho” or “Montana.” She had motioned her new friend to a chair and was leaning forward opposite her. “Do you know,” she suddenly confided, “I’m terribly afraid of you.”
“Good gracious, why?”
“You’ll laugh, but never mind. It’s because you’re so distinguished-looking.”
Miss Cread reflected. “A distinctive appearance doesn’t necessarily make one dangerous. It is I, on the contrary, who should be afraid.”
“I’m sure nothing could frighten you!”
“Oh, yes. Responsibility. You see, this is my first post. I’m quite inexperienced. I do hope Mr. Windrom made that clear.”
“Oh, experience! Why, you’re simply swimming in it,—in the kind that matters to me at this moment. I mean your life, your surroundings, all the things that decided Mr. Windrom in his selection of you as a companion, have done something for you, have made you the person who—bowled me over when I entered this room. My husband is brimming over with the same,—oh, call it genuineness. Like sterling silver spoons. I don’t know whether I’m sterling or not, but I do know I need polishing. . . . It may be entirely a matter of birth. Papa and I haven’t a crumb of birth, so far as I know,—though I have a musty old aunt who swears we have. She endows convents, and her idea of a grand pedigree would be to have descended from a line of saints, I imagine. . . . For my part I have no pretensions whatever, not one, any more than poor Papa. He thinks it rather a pity to be born at all, though he’s forever helping people get born. . . . I was rash enough to dive into marriage without holding my breath, and got a mouthful of water. Sometimes I feel that my husband wishes I could be a little more sedate, a little more,—oh, you know, Miss Cread, what I called distinguished-looking, though I could feel that you disapproved of the phrase. One of the very things you must do is to teach me what I ought to say instead of distinguished-looking. That’s what Minnie Hopper would have said, and at least I’m not a Minnie Hopper.”
“You’re like nobody I’ve ever seen or heard of!” This was fairly ejaculated, and it gave Louise courage to continue, breathlessly, as before.
“It is for my husband’s sake that I’m trying this experiment. At least I think it’s for his sake: we never quite know when we’re being selfish, do we? He will soon be a rather important person, for here. He’s getting more and more things to look after: I can hardly turn nowadays without running into some new thing that sort of belongs to us. We shall have guests from England later on, and I can’t have them dying of mortification on my threshold. . . . When I married I was blind in love, and somehow took it for granted that I’d pick up all the hints I should need. But I haven’t. . . . Am I talking nonsense?”
“Not at all. Please go on.”
“If you have any pride you can’t ask your husband to instruct you in subjects you should know more about than he,—don’t you agree? I’m sure I know more about baking bread than any of the Eveleys back to Adam, but I don’t know a tenth as much about when to shake hands and when not to, and that’s much more important than I ever dreamed.
“It may be silly, but I’ve made up my mind to be the sort of person my husband won’t feel he ought to make excuses for. Not that he ever would, of course! I’ve never admitted a word of all this to a soul. I hope you understand, and I hope you don’t think such trifles trivial!”
“My dear! . . . . Aren’t you a little morbid about yourself? I know women of the world who are uncouth compared with you. . . . As for creating an impression, you are rather formidable already! There are little tricks of pronunciation I can show you, and I shall be delighted to tell you all the stupid things I know about shaking hands and the like. . . . I’m already on your side; I was afraid I mightn’t be. One can never depend on a man’s version, you know, even as discerning a man as Mr. Windrom; and a woman usually takes the man’s part in a domestic situation.”
Louise had a sudden twinge.
“There is only one thing that worries me now.”
Miss Cread waited, with questioning eyebrows.
“How am I going to pass you off? I’ve told my husband I knew you when you taught at Harristown! I went to Normal School there for a year, you know. He’ll see with half an eye that you’re no school teacher. What are we to invent? I can’t fib for a cent.”
“Well. . . . Shall we invent that my family lost its money and I had to work for my living? And that things are better now, but my family have all perished, and I’ve come here for a change. That statement doesn’t do serious violence to my conscience.”
“There’s a little two-room log cabin you can have to retire to whenever you get bored with us. . . . And of course we’ll have to call each other by our first names. You don’t mind, do you?”
Miss Cread smiled sympathetically.
“She’s nice,” decided Louise, in relief, then said, “I’ll go out and help Nana now. After lunch, en route la bonne troupe!”
This phrase, more than anything Louise had said, afforded Miss Cread the clue to their relationship. Louise had reverted into French with a little flourish which seemed to say, “At least I have one advantage over you: I am bi-lingual.” Miss Cread saw that it was characteristic of Louise to underestimate her virtues and fail to recognize her faults, and for her, who had spoken French in Paris before Louise was born, Louise’s accent was unlovely, as only the Canadian variety can be. She would let her pupil make the discovery for herself. Miss Cread was pleased to find that her mission was going to be a subtle one.
“I shall be fearfully nervous for a few days, until we get into swing,” said Louise at the table.
“Then my first task is to restore your composure.”
“Your second will be to keep it restored. . . . I’m growing less and less afraid of you. Wouldn’t it be funny if I should get so used to you I answered you back, like in school?”
“There’s no telling where it will stop. You’re a venturesome woman.”
Louise laughed merrily. “Don’t you love adventure?” It was an announcement rather than an inquiry.