CHAPTER XXI.
Next morning I was stirring my oatmeal and water when the door opened and in burst Jack. His attire gave evidence of haste; he had thrown a pea-jacket about a somewhat incomplete toilet. I was about to summon up a jocular remark when something in his face silenced me.
"Have you seen Jean?" he demanded.
"No. Why——"
"She's not in her room. Gone. Was there last night—part of the night——"
"Sure she's not in the house?"
"Hard to lose her in our two-by-four, Frank. Not at the stables—I've hunted. It's snowing, and the wind is rising; there's no trail."
This was serious. Jack sat down, and, as though oppressed with heat, threw open his pea-jacket and exposed his undershirt.
Jean gone!
In a moment he sprang to his feet again and seized me by the arm. His grip was stronger than he knew. "She's not here, Frank? Straight now, Frank, she's not here?"
I turned my open palms toward him. "If only she were!" I exclaimed. . . . . . . "When did you miss her?"
"Ten—fifteen minutes ago, when I got up. I found my lamp out of oil, and I went to her room to borrow hers. She didn't answer, and I went in. She wasn't there. Her coat and cap are gone. How she got out without waking us!"
He turned to a window, peering through a little bare spot in the pane close to the sash. "Looks like a rough day," he said, quietly, as though trying to disguise the import of his words . . . . . . . . "She's been melancholy of late; trying to hide it, but I could tell . . . . . . . My God, she may have been gone for hours!"
"Then it's time we were after her!" I exclaimed, a sudden impulse for action bringing me out of my stupor. I shoved my burning porridge to the back of the stove and rushed to my room to complete dressing. And in my head was pounding one word, Spoof—Spoof—Spoof!
"Where?" Jack demanded, from the door of my room. "What's your guess?"
But I was already becoming an artist, that artist that Jean so eagerly sought in me.
"Just two places," I said. "She's gone to Mrs. Alton's or to Mrs. Brown's. I don't think she would go to Lucy Burke's—didn't know them so well."
Jack's look of relief was pathetic. I had always thought of Jack as being in some way my superior, born to rule while I was born to obey. Suddenly I found him a child in my hands.
"You think so?" he grasped at my words. "You think—that's—where she's gone?"
"Nothing surer. We talked a good deal about Mrs. Alton yesterday." I added, out of the fulness of my invention, "and she said how lonely Mrs. Alton must be, and that we ought to go over and see her. She's started worrying over that in the night and it's got on her mind—upset her a bit. Still, it might be Brown's. The danger is that she may be lost in this storm. Hustle back and finish dressing, and then strike for Mrs. Alton's. I'll try Brown's first, then Jake's, then Burke's. Hustle!"
It was new business for me to order Jack, but he needed ordering to keep him from utter futility at that moment. I gave his hand a squeeze and thrust him out of the door.
"Now, Mr. Spoof—now for you!" I snapped to myself. I had a revolver, an old rusty weapon which I never used, but which I kept lying around in case of something which I called an emergency. Clearly this was it. I found it and some cartridges and thrust them into my overcoat pocket; then drew it out and studied it with a peculiar sort of fascination.
"Don't be a fool," I enjoined myself, as I threw it on the bed. But in a moment I picked it up again and put it in my pocket.
Outside the snow was flying in a sifting wind from the north-west. It was not a blizzard; it was not even a storm, but it had the threat of both. The sun was not up, and the grey light of dawn penetrated the snow waste not more than a dozen yards. I studied the wind for a moment, to make sure that it was blowing steadily in one direction; having satisfied myself as to this, my problem—one of my problems—was much simplified. Carrying the wind over my right shoulder I bore off toward the south and section Two.
The trail to Spoof's had been entirely obliterated in its weeks of non-usage, and I could do nothing better than follow my sense of direction. It became apparent that the sky was too overcast to give me any benefit from the sun, although the grey circle of dawn gradually grew until the vision would carry a hundred yards or so. For the most part the crust bore me, but here and there it gave away, and once or twice sent me floundering on my face. On such occasions I was careful to test my direction by the wind before continuing. If the wind should veer I had a good chance of wandering off into the wilderness—and the unknown.
That, too, was the chance which Jean had taken. It bore more and more heavily upon me as I plodded through that measureless waste of snow. I had no doubt that she had started for Spoof's; whether she ever had reached there was another question. She was able to stand his neglect no longer—she was bound to have it out with him, just as, yesterday, I had been bound to have it out with her. . . . . . . . At moments I wished that she might not find Spoof's. At moments it seemed that almost anything was better than that. There was the possibility that she might strike a circle and wander about on these vacant sections. It was not very cold; she would not freeze until exhaustion overcame her. Possibly even now she was wandering in these milky mists, even within earshot of me.
"Jean! Jean!" I cried, raising my voice against the buffeting of the wind, but it died unechoed in the void of space.
There was the possibility that she had been overcome; that even now she was lying somewhere on the white snow, her white, cold face turned to a white, cold sky, her lithe little body, no longer lithe, forming the occasion for a drift which the sifting wind had already seized as convenient to its purpose. . . . . . . The sweat trickled down from under my cap and I pulled it off and let the comforting snow fall on my forehead. And now I used my eyes more than ever before, to detect, if I might, any object lying on the snow. Dark specks loomed up through the mist, and many a detour I made with pounding heart, to find only a prairie boulder or a lump of tumbleweed blown into a wolf willow.
Again, Jean might have reached Spoof's. That was going to be the most difficult possibility of all. What should I do? I fingered the weapon in my pocket, but I knew that that was nonsense. If Jean had gone to Spoof she had done so of her own free will; she need not account for herself to me; she might even resent my interference. Spoof might order me out as a meddling busybody; he might subject me to the torture of taking Jean from me before my very eyes. I was even less than Jack; had I been her brother I could have held him to accountability. But I would not be ordered out; I would not be abased——Surely I had a right. I was her friend, her neighbour. . . .
Her neighbour. "Perhaps that is the trouble," she had said.
I fingered my revolver affectionately. I was glad I had brought it.
I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes after nine. I had been fool enough to start without noting the time, and had no idea how far I had travelled. Surely I should be near Spoof's now.
But our engagement had never been quite cancelled. Or had it? I tried to recall, but my mind blurred. Once we were engaged; we were to have been married before this time; Jean and I were to have been married at Christmas. Then Spoof. I was not clever enough for her . . . . . . Perhaps Spoof would be, I thought, and hated myself for thinking it.
Perhaps she was right. I was a good bit of a dub. Never read much, never thought much. Bounded by the corner stakes of Fourteen. An ox. Jean had as much as called me an ox. Thinking more about oats than sunsets.
Didn't even mention her new cap. When I did I turned my compliment upside down; pinned it to the cap, instead of to her. Spoof would not have done that.
Our poem. The snow would be deep on it now. Or perhaps not. It might have whipped clear. If—if anything happened to Jean I would go to that poem, I would yearn over it, I would caress it, I would lean upon it——It was snow, and would be gone in the spring. Something about keeping her guessing. I was to keep her guessing. Well, she was keeping me guessing just now, with a vengeance!
I tried to call Jean up in my memory, to visualize her profile, her eyes, her hair, her lips, the tilting lift of her ankle, the joyous stride of her young, free limbs. It was all a mist; a picture out of focus. It was a nebulous thing, vague, indistinct, unformed. Through and beyond it I saw the grey snow falling eternally. Then about this central figure—if one may call a thing so ethereal a figure—gathered a circle of light, an irradiance glowing on a million crystals of frost; it grew and glowed and brightened until it haloed about her head. It was Jean!
"Oh! my God" I cried. "Not yet! Not yet!"
I fell in the snow. I floundered aimlessly in the broken crust. . . .
When I came back to realization the vision was gone. Only the snow, shot through with its thin mists of light, fell on forever.
Was I freezing? The thought prodded me to consciousness. I drew a hand from my mitt and thrust it against my face. The fingers were warm. The skin of my forehead would wrinkle. I was able to wriggle my toes in my boots. No, I was not freezing. My troubles were of the mind; my bodily engines were functioning properly. . . . . . . . I got the wind over my right shoulder and pressed on.
Jean wanted me to keep her guessing. That was the easy, slangy way of putting it. Poetic license, she had called it. What she meant was that I must always have something in reserve; some mysterious corner of myself into which she had not explored. Something to keep up the sense of mystery, the spirit of adventure, in which romance is born, without which romance must die. No doubt she was right. After all, why should she marry me? What was I more than a biped beast of burden, an animal designed to eat, sleep, labor, and reproduce itself? . . . Spoof was something more than that. Was I wise to interrupt them at all? Why not leave them alone?
It was while I wrestled with the thought of a great renunciation that the light broke about me. I was sure that animal for animal—ox for ox—Jean preferred me to Spoof. It was in those qualities that were not animal that she preferred him. It was for me, therefore, by all means, to delay her decision, and then to set about deliberately to develop the qualities in which I was at a disadvantage. I must read. These idle winter months gave me the very opportunity to read, and I cursed myself that so many weeks had slipped by unimproved. What to read? I had my old school books and a bible—little else. Still, if one knew his bible—if I were to read up some book in it, develop a simple philosophy out of it, enveigle Jean into an argument, and best her, that would be keeping her guessing, wouldn't it? . . . . . . . I could borrow books from Spoof. It was a strange sidelight on my feelings toward Spoof that even at this moment and for this purpose there seemed nothing unnatural in the thought that I should borrow books from him. Other neighbours might have books; one never can tell. Most people remain unread, not from lack of books, but from lack of application. There was the Reverend Locke. I would make an excuse to town, and would borrow books from him. I would even spend a few of my hard earned dollars on magazines, or on membership in a mail order library. Of all this Jean was to know nothing. I would keep her guessing.
I trudged on in a mood akin to cheerfulness. I had made my decision. I had stepped out of an old world into a new one. Something which must have lain dormant all these years awoke and thrilled me with the possibilities of what I might become. Life for me was no longer a thing of the body, which is death, but a thing of the mind and spirit, which are eternal. And yet . . . In imagination I allowed myself to feel Jean's hair brushing my cheek.
Presently something waved to me out of the mist. I stopped, with eyes intent. Undoubtedly something was waving to me out of the mist. "Jean! Jean!" I called, but there was no answer. I moved toward it eagerly, and suddenly the mystery was made clear. It was a great sunflower, clothed in hoary frost, nodding in the wind. I smiled to myself at its almost spectral appearance; then glancing ahead I saw another and another and another; a whole row of them. This was Spoof's! These were the sunflowers which he had planted in accordance with Jake's grotesque advice. Spoof's shack must be nearby. Surely, there to the left, was duller darkness through the snow.
I hurried toward it. The angular outline of Spoof's shack emerged gradually out of the mist, like a sunken boat rising slowly to the surface of the water. Half of it was concealed at best by the great drifts that bordered it. I found my way to the shack, around the corner, to the door. Should I knock? Prairie manners, particularly among bachelor neighbours, are free and easy. It would be no great breach of etiquette for me casually to enter Spoof's house without knocking. I believed I had done that before. And there would be a purpose in it, now of all times . . . I knocked.
There was no answer. That was subject to different explanations. A knock on a bachelor's door, miles from a neighbour, in midwinter, is a thing so unexpected that sometimes the ear does not register it; it merely cocks itself to make sure if the sound should be repeated.
I knocked again. In a moment the door opened, and I saw Spoof, in a flannel shirt and smoking jacket, corduroy trousers, moccasins—I think I took in every detail of his attire. His tie was drawn neatly up to the throat; his hair was well brushed; he had not shaved. His moustache was heavier, his face paler, thinner——
"Why, Frank!" he exclaimed. I seemed to hear both welcome and embarrassment in his voice. "Come in, old man! This is quite a day at section Two."
On account of the dull weather and the frosted windows Spoof had a lamp burning; it was a brass lamp, with a twisted, ornamental bowl and a cloth shade of some old gold color. It stood on a shelf which he had built in a corner of his only room; its subdued but cheerful light touched the objects in the little shack with a glint of color which was in sharp contrast to the drab day outside. Spoof's couch had been made up; his steamer rug lay tucked about it. The walls were a maze of firearms, prints, curios. There was the warmth of a fire and the odor of something cooking.
In the corner opposite to the lamp, on the floor, on a mat, sat Jean. Her knees were propped up in front of her and her long, supple fingers were linked about them. It was as she had sat that day—what, only yesterday?—with me under the great drift on the bank of the gully. A tapestry affair of some kind, hung on the wall, sheltered her from direct contact with the cold boards, and a cushion with a yellow dragon further protected her. She looked up at me as I entered and her face was a riddle too enigmatic to analyse. Annoyance, defiance, pleasure, humor, indifference, were strangely and inextricably interwoven.
"Hello, Frank," she said, quietly.
"You see, Je——Miss Lane is an early caller," Spoof explained. "Although not a frequent one," he added, "any more than you are. If she had known you were coming no doubt you would have come together."
"Yes, that might have been better," I said, pointedly.
"The trail is gone," Spoof continued, ignoring the jab in my remark. "It must have taken some skill to find the direction."
"Particularly before daylight," I said, more pointedly than before.
"Oh, don't quizz, Frank," Jean protested. "I'll tell you all about it presently. I was just saying to Spoof, when your knock interrupted me, how much the wiser the Japanese are than we. They sit on the floor, as nature intended them to do, and how graceful they are! I am playing the part."
"But not for that reason, I am afraid," said Spoof. "You see, I rejoice in only one chair, called 'easy' by way of courtesy. Miss Lane refused to sit in it while I stood, and I, of course, could not sit in it while she stood. So she solved a deadlock by sitting on the floor."
Nothing very incriminating about all this. They were just chatting naturally; surely they couldn't be such actors as to stage this dialogue without a moment's notice. Still—I had had to knock the second time. . . . . . .
"You have breakfasted?" Spoof inquired.
"Why, I am afraid I must confess I haven't. I left home rather unexpectedly." I was not disposed to beat about the bush, and the commonplaceness of their talk irritated me. Surely here was a situation bad enough without making it worse by pretending there was nothing bad about it.
Spoof glanced at a clock which chuckled away amiably on his wall. "We can have lunch within an hour," he said. With a fork he prodded something stewing on the stove. "Yes, the rabbit is almost done. By Jove, a good fat one! Fancy how they pick so lordly a living! Will you wait, or would you rather have a bite now? I can only give you bread and marmalade at once. You must be hungry."
"No, I'm not hungry," I said, truthfully enough. The fact is, I couldn't keep my eyes off Jean. Now and again, when she didn't know I watched, her face seemed to take on something of melancholy; but mostly it was bright, responsive, vivacious. She seemed to fit so wonderfully—physically and mentally she fitted so wonderfully into Spoof's shack. She had laid her overshoes aside and as she sat the brown ribs of her homeknit stockings peeped over the top of a neatly laced boot. This was before the days of the frank revelations of our modern fashions. Her intertwined fingers shuttled slowly back and forth against each other; her lips were ruddy in the glow from the little brass lamp; her hair, parted in the middle and drawn into a wavy roll at the back of her head gave her a peculiarly girlish appearance. She was so young, so small, and withal so wise, so venturesome, so defiant. The place where my breakfast should have been contracted with a great yearning; a huge emptiness filled me.
So we waited for the rabbit to stew, and Spoof and Jean chatted on. I was more the audience than one of the players. They were away into some dispute about atmospheric colorings; something that had to do with rainbows, sun-dogs, ice prisms, light radiation. It was beyond me; so obviously beyond me that Spoof had mercy and brought Jean back to earth.
"What do you think of the scheme to form a new Province here—two new Provinces," he shot at me, "instead of our present Districts? More autonomy and more taxes as I see it."
"Yes, I suppose," I groped. The fact is I knew nothing about it.
"Would seem more natural to follow the old district boundaries, though," Spoof commented. "They say they are going to run the Provinces from south to north—as far as the sixtieth parallel. There'll be an election next year. You ought to think about that, Frank. It would be some honor to sit in the first parliament of Saskatchewan."
The idea struck me as grotesque. I said so.
"Why not?" Jean demanded, and there was fire in her voice. "Perhaps not the first parliament, but some parliament," she qualified.
"Some parliament," I said to myself. "Perhaps. If I had Jean to goad me on I might do—anything."
Spoof scraped a corner clear on the window pane, and said some lines about "Snow cold—in snow." It was something about a soldier dying in the trenches; not wounded, or fighting, but just dying in the snow. I saw Jean's wrapt attention; the glisten of her eyes; the gulp of her white throat. What power was this the man had over her? Was this all a thing of mind, or was it body, too? I had told myself that, animal for animal, Jean would prefer me. As I looked at Spoof's strong figure, well knit, well clad, I wondered.
In some way we put in the hour. I did not press the subject, the question, the suspicion which was turmoiling my mind. It was Jean's move. I waited for her.