CHAPTER XVIII.
The scene inside was an animated and amazing one. In the principal room a table had been built and now groaned beneath a load such as I had not thought the country-side could supply. It was covered with snowy linen, and an assortment of chinaware of several varieties of pattern threw back the yellow glint of two great oil lamps, one of which I recognized as having recently decorated a shelf in a corner of Spoof's shack on section Two. I had just time to catch a glimpse of a frosted wedding-cake in the centre of the table and a steaming turkey at one end when Jean brought me out of my trance.
"Isn't it wonderful, Frank—wonderful!—to think of it, and all of them so poor! Why, even, there's Mr. Sneezit!"
It was true. The whole community was present. They had swarmed to our premises in our absence, bringing the necessaries of the wedding dinner with them, and now they were lined up around the walls, guilty-faced but delighted. There was Brown, whom we had first found wrestling with the architecture of a sod stable; there was Mrs. Brown, dimpled and smiling, dreaming of far-off English Yule-log and mistletoe, and making her dreams come true on the wind-swept plains of Canada; there were the three little Browns, washed and on their good behavior. There was Andy Smith, the ship builder from Glasgow, now learning the drift of stone-boats and prairie schooners, and puffing on his short clay pipe the while. There was Ole Hansen and Olga, his wife, and tucked into the recesses of my room I discerned the outlines of fair-haired, tow-headed children—doubtless six in all. And there, sure enough, was our good friend Sneezit, and beside him Sneezit's wife, both trying to look very proper and at ease, and failing rather sadly, except when a broad Russian grin sent their more forbidding aspects scampering for cover.
Mrs. Sneezit's bright yellow shawl lent a dash of color to the company. The Sneezit juniors had been left at home, where, snuggled in their warm dug-out, they doubtless speculated proudly and somewhat wonderingly upon their parents' debut into English-speaking society. And there, too, across the table was the American, Burke, tall, lean and lantern-jawed, his weather-beaten cheeks still revealing a suggestion of the olive hues of a more southern latitude, his thin lips parted over well-set teeth in a smile of friendly amusement. Nearby was his busy wife, Lucy, short and active and with possibilities of plumpness to compensate her for the ravages of time. They were a wonderful company, typical foundation stones of a nation; foundation work the quality of which shall be tested through all the years to come.
I said the whole community was present, but I was wrong. Mrs. Alton and the little boy, Jerry, were not there. I mentioned their absence to Spoof when I had an opportunity.
"They must not have known about it," was his explanation. But Spoof had evidently been at pains to make sure that all the others in the district should know. Why had he omitted Mrs. Alton? It was one more tangle in the puzzle of Spoof's peculiar attitude toward the widow on Eighteen.
As you may believe, our little house, with its groaning table and all these husky neighbours, was very, very full; when Jean and Marjorie and Jack and I and the minister and Reddy and Jake and Bella Donna and Spoof were added we were packed like city people in a six-o'clock street car. It was with difficulty we found elbow room to get out of our wraps, and then there were laughing and hand-shaking and congratulations all round.
"What happened the oxen?" Burke asked, when the general buzz permitted the question. "They came a-roarin' round here like a range stampede a few minutes ago, trailin' a sleigh-tongue all unravelled like a Christmas tree. I put 'em in the barn."
"You shouldn't have done that," I protested. "Their place is outside when company comes."
"Couldn't make 'em believe it," said Burke. "They were set on goin' in, and most obstrep'rous about bein' unyoked. I turned Ole's bucks out for the sake o' peace."
"Yaw, dat was right," Ole assented. "Ay tank by Yimminy when folks get married nothing's too good for nobody." Ole's references were somewhat obscure but his good intentions could have been read a mile away.
"But what did happen?" Burke persisted. "We were just goin' to organize a search party."
"It was all the fault of the bally bullocks," Spoof explained. "I told them to hard a-port and they slithered to starboard, and over we went."
"Ah'm affeared the skipper should lose his papers," said Andy Smith, dryly. "He's no a safe mon on sich a sea."
"That sea is nothing to the one our friends here have just shipped on," Spoof rejoined. "As for losing my papers; that's a fact, I did. My cigarette papers. Who's got a helping?"
So the banter continued until Mrs. Burke reminded us that "the turk" was cooling off and began seating us about the table,—as far as it went. Someone had thoughtfully brought boards to build a table and seats, and as many as could sat down. The others were served standing.
When we were settled Mr. Locke arose and asked a blessing. I don't exactly remember his words, but I do remember the reverent hush that swept over our little throng, and the wonderful dynamic quality of the man which lifted us in an instant from the commonplace into the infinite. He gave thanks for the food before us; then asked a blessing upon the principals in the day's events. Might their lives be prosperous and fruitful; might they be useful and glad in all their days; might they enter the crimson glow of life's Indian Summer with the same high purpose and romantic love as crowned them in the yellow dawning at the thresholds of their career. And might the little community now gathered in neighbourly kindness about our table thrive and prosper and bring forth food for the sustenance of the world and souls for the Kingdom.
The serious words sobered us for a minute, but it was only a minute. The stimulus of turkey with cranberry sauce and scalloped potatoes and boiled turnips and creamed carrots would have stirred to gaiety hearts much heavier than ours, and it soon developed into a noisy and frolicsome meal. The turkey was an enormous bird; the attack of all our hungry party left the skeleton not entirely stripped. I remember that one of the little Hansens, venturing up like Oliver Twist with a demand for more, was soundly rapped on his yellow head by a drumstick in the heavy hand of Ole, but the children as a whole were well behaved, allowing for the example set them by their elders. Then we had plum pudding and sauce and apple pie and cheese, and nuts and candy for everybody. Jean and I mentally ricocheted between amazement at the generosity of the meal and speculation as to whence it had come. No one ever told us the secret, but we did learn that Spoof had a fat cheque from England just before Christmas, and that Mrs. Burke's cooking of turkey and apple pie was the talk of Humboldt county in Iowa, and that Mrs. Brown positively refused first place to anyone when it came to making plum pudding, and so we formed our own conclusions.
After the meal the table was knocked to pieces and carried out so that there might be more room, and as the bridal couple stood about wondering what was to happen next they suddenly found themselves the objects of a number of presentations. Mrs. Brown made hers first; six wonderful pieces of Limoges china, hand painted by the squire's daughter herself, and presented to Mrs. B. on her departure for Canada.
"The dear miss—she were a good soul, if I say it—said as 'ow she 'ad read in a book that they drank tea in Canada, just like real people and may be these would be useful as well as hornamental, but love me, dearies, I need the room more. I suppose I should 'ardly give 'em away, but if the squire's daughter hever comes a-visiting me I'll 'ave to borrow 'em back." Her lips were smiling as she made this little speech, but a tell-tale splash fell on one of the pieces as she handed it over.
"Our present is outside, and I'm a-goin' to bring it in," said Burke, putting on his cap and coat.
"Oh, I wouldn't bring it in, Tom," his wife suggested. "Let them see it out there."
But Burke was bound to do it in style. "In it comes," he insisted, and plunged into the night. In a few minutes he returned with a heavy sack of his back, which he set in the middle of the floor. Again and again he made the trip until five sacks were in the pile.
"Ten bushels of seed wheat," he exclaimed proudly, "and may every kernel yield a hundred-fold!"
"Pretty good speech, Tom," said his wife. "I was sure you'd forget it."
"Forget nothin'!" Tom retorted. "I made that up, right off the bat."
"You'll be Member of Parliament some day, with a gift like that," Jack prophesied.
"Fer the constitooency of Sittin' Crow," Jake added, maliciously, but the point of his shaft was lost on the audience.
"Weel, Ah'm thinkin' Ah'll be next," remarked the placid Andy Smith, tapping his clay pipe and returning it to his pocket. From somewhere he produced a kit of steel-worker's tools; wonderful pieces of British workmanship, they were. I believe Jack still carries some of them in the back seat of his automobile.
"No as much as Ah could o' wisht," said Andy, modestly, "but richt guid in the makin', and they'll come gey handy when you buy that threshing-mill for the neighbourhood."
Just then we observed the color mantling to the tawny hair of Ole Hansen.
"Ay tank by Yimminy Ay mak myself maybe a yoke (joke)," the tall Swede confessed. "Ay say to Olga, 'By dam, Olga, what you tank, Ay tak a load o' hay?' She say, 'Ole, you get more fool all the time. Hay for a marriaging! What you tank dey are, oxes?' Den Ay say, 'Well, den, w'at else?' an' she say, 'Dere ain't nodding else,' an' den Ay say 'Dah hay gets it', an' so it does."
"I hope you're not going to bring it in, too," said Lucy Burke.
"Yah!" said Ole, opening his mouth in a great circular orifice and laughing silently while his head rocked in inward appreciation of Mrs. Burke's joke. "Ay tank she make good bedding, but not to-night. Ay pitch 'im off beside dah barn."
We found it was true. Ole, having nothing to bring but a load of hay, in the fullness of his heart brought that.
But an even more striking token of that community spirit which was the salvation of those early days was now to be presented. Sneezit had slipped out while the hay was under discussion and now came thundering in, his broad back bearing a whole dressed carcass of pig. Sneezit did not trust his English to make any remarks, but he smiled broadly under his bristly mustache. . . . . But what I saw was a dug-out full of children, with eyes peering through the gloom, and little, wistful, silent mouths.
"Now it's my turn," said Spoof, but Jake interrupted.
"As it happened, I was down in Regina on business connected with my estate when news o' this approachin' tie-up on Fourteen reached me, by means of a note from Spoof," Jake explained. "At first I couldn't make head or hinder of it, it was so bad wrote. So I took it to a young fellow I know with lots o' learnin'; got to know him on account o' the int'rest he usta take in the people on Twenty-two; he found out I located youse boys an' girls and usta come roun' pretty reg'lar askin' questions casual-like, an' I says to him, 'How many shirts does a fellow get on this laundry ticket?' Well, he read it over slow to himself, an' then he jus' sits lookin' at nothin' till I begun to think maybe there was some bad langwidge such as he couldn't repeat in my presence. An' after awhile he says, 'Jake, jus' another mirage; you know, those phenom'na'—that's what he called it—'on the prairie that makes you think things is what they ain't. Let's go down town,' he says, an' on the way he tells me what's in the ticket. Well, I thought he was leadin' for a bar, which is the best place I know of to raise a new mirage when your old one goes bust, but danged if he don' head me into a jewelry store. And there he buys this."
Jake delved into a pocket and brought out a little gold pendant, a chaste and delicate example of the goldsmith's art. He held it for a moment to the admiring gaze of all present before resuming his narrative.
"'Give that,' my friend says, 'with my good wishes an' a touch o' my regrets, to the young lady on Twenty-two, with the compliments o' Sergeant Brook,' he-says," and so Jake placed the little golden trinket in Jean's hands. . . . . It was a difficult situation. Jean's first impulse was to hand it back.
"Better accept it," I whispered to her. "The fewer explanations the better."
"But it—it's a wedding present," she remonstrated. "How can I . . . ?"
"Keep it until you need it," I suggested. Jean was very lovely in the heightened color of her embarrassment, and as her hand fell by my side I seized it surreptitiously in my own.
"Oh, Jean, why not make it to-night?" I whispered, mad with her beauty and her nearness.
"It's quite impossible," she answered, but she did not immediately withdraw her hand. She left me marvelling more and more over the tantalizing complexity of her attitude toward me.
Fortunately, the interest of those about us had been quickly rearrested by Jake. "Havin' a little weakness o' my own," Jake was continuing, "although I never said nothin' about it, not wishing to take advantage o' my young friend, Sittin' Crow, or to start a scene with Bella Donna, I bought its mate fer the lady on Fourteen." And with this little speech he placed another pendant in the hands of Marjorie.
"When I came to Canada to farm," said Spoof, after the excitement over Jake's gift had died down, "I came equipped for everything but farming. I could have started a second-hand store, a curiosity shop, an arsenal, or a music hall much better than I could start a farm. In fact, I feel like all of these things, except, perhaps, the music hall, when I look around my shack. Particularly well was I equipped against savages, grizzly bears, and mountain lions. I remember the days I spent in picking out my rifles, weighing the qualities of this arm and that, and the penetrating power of the different bullets. My biggest game so far has been a badger, alias a chinook, whose hide now adorns the den of my immediate and admiring ancestor. Out of the abundance of my defences I now bring to you, John Lane, this piece of artillery, with the injunction that it must never be pointed toward section Two, and, preferably, not at anything else. Hang it over your portal, as evidence that you can be a desperate man upon occasion, and let it go at that. I have been thoughtful enough not to bring any ammunition." Spoof then produced, out of the bedroom where Brown, acting as his agent, had secretly cached it, a repeating rifle, which Jack handled with as much admiration as Marjorie spent on her pendant, and then placed it lovingly away.
"Now, I believe that's all," said Spoof.
"Not yet," Reddy interrupted. "I want to be in on this, although I didn't come prepared." He had written something in a note-book, which he now tore out and handed to Jack. It was a receipt for the price of his wedding ring. Jack protested, but Reddy would have it no other way.
The only one not represented by a presentation was the minister, but he proved equal to the occasion.
"My children," he said,—he was not much older than Jack or I, perhaps about the age of Spoof—"I am not a man of the world, and consequently cannot give you of the good things which the world provides. The theory that a minister should lay up his treasure in Heaven is taken rather literally in these times. I am not quarreling with that. Materialism is the murderous outlaw of the age, an enemy that goes bullying through the land, outraging our finer natures, overturning our ideals, polluting our ambitions. I hope I am not envious of his followers. And to you, and all of you, I give something that money could not buy—my blessing, with a promise of my ministrations, without charge, on those future occasions upon which it may be assumed you will be in need of them."
The minister had escaped from a somewhat embarrassing position with the dignity that became his calling, and with a gentle joke that showed how very human he was at heart.
"Clear out the pork and the seed wheat," Spoof ordered, as there seemed likely to be a lull in the night's enjoyment. "Ole, it is fortunate that Mrs. Burke persuaded you not to bring in your load of hay."
So the floor was cleared. The door, when opened, revealed a wedge of snow-storm whistling by, but inside the wintry weather was forgotten and the tremor of our shanty's timbers passed unnoticed. Reddy had mounted himself on our own table—the big one had been taken out, in pieces—and was twisting the strings of a violin to tune. Presently his bow cut loose a drone of dancing rhythm, and feet began to tap the plain pine boards of the floor.
"Pardners all!" Jake commanded. It was evident he was to be master of ceremonies; he had just taken a great chew of tobacco to promote the flow of language. The insistent note of the violin brought Jack and me, with Marjorie and Jean, Mr. and Mrs. Burke, and Mr. and Mrs. Brown, to the centre of the room. The dancing would be of the "square-dance" variety which was no novelty to us or to the Burkes, and which the others would soon pick up under the guidance of Professer Jake.
"S'lute yer pardner! . . . Pass 'er by. . . Balance to the next." And we were off. Jake and the fiddler warmed up with the dancers, and presently the shanty was rocking with the stamp and the swing of it. Those were not the days of dancing that is little more than a walk; one danced with all his heart and body, and was not afraid to shake the floors and ceilings.
The end of the set found us perspiring and happy.
And so the evening wore on. Ole and Olga joined the dancers in the third set, and thereafter never left the floor; Andy Smith ventured into Marjorie's arms, and in five minutes was feeling younger than in the days of his apprenticeship on the Clyde; Spoof danced with Jean as much as seemed necessary. When Spoof was not monopolizing her, Burke or Brown or Smith was. But at length she spurned us all in order that she might win Mr. Sneezit to the floor. The Russian hesitated, fearing to appear foolish, but he would have been more or less than human if he could have resisted Jean's enticements, and presently she was leading him through the simple movements of a cotillion.
Then it was that the minister distinguished himself. He had kept aloof from the dancing, but now, seeing Mrs. Sneezit being left somewhat out of the party, his Christianity overcame his creed and, sweeping down upon her, he seized her in his strong arms and had her upon her feet before she knew it. Her protestations were of no avail; she must dance with him and dance she did. The music and the kindness and the humanity of it all seemed to penetrate her stolid heart, and Mrs. Sneezit—she of the brood with the peering eyes and the wistful, hungry mouths—was won by the magic of fiddle and foot back into the gay days of girlhood and danced as though the world were hers.
At length they went. The flurries of snow had driven by; the moon poured its silver radiance on a world of downy ivory, and the bigger stars blinked stolidly from a steel-blue heaven as our guests bundled themselves into jumpers and sleighs and took their departure. Their cries of good wishes and good luck were wafted back to us above the crunching of the snow. We watched them until they faded out of sight in the white moonlight.
Soon after Jack and Marjorie and Jean crossed the snow-filled valley to their over-crowded house, and left me to one that was over-empty. For a long time I stood looking into the stove, with lid and lifter in my hand, in the act of putting on more wood. The glow of the coals went grey as I watched, and, for the first time in my life, I measured the depth to which the plummet of loneliness can plunge. . . .