Mrs. Annersly rose, and, after looking down on her a moment, stooped and kissed her.
"Still," she said, "it wouldn't be quite honest to expect your husband to bear it too. Good-night, and try to think well of him. I almost fancy he deserves it."
She went out smiling, but, when the door had closed, her face grew grave again.
"I wonder if that man will have reason to hate me for what I have done," she said.
CHAPTER VI
THE PRAIRIE
Two long whistles came ringing up the track.
Carrie Leland rose unsteadily in the big overheated car and struggled into the furs which had been one of her husband's gifts to her. She had never worn furs of that kind before, and, indeed, had never seen anything quite like them in her friends' possession; but, while that had naturally been a cause of satisfaction, it was, nevertheless, with a vague repugnance she put them on. They were one of the visible tokens that in the most sordid sense of the word she belonged to him. The man had not won her favour. In fact, he had made no great pretence of seeking it, for which, so far as that went, she was grateful; but he had evidently carried out his part of the bargain, and now she was part of his property, acquired by purchase. The recognition of it carried with it an almost intolerable sting, though hitherto—and it was just a fortnight since her wedding—she had not felt it quite so keenly. He had not been exacting, and it had been comparatively easy to keep him at due distance on board the big mail-boat and in the crowded train, but she realised it would be different, now they were almost home.
In the meanwhile the great train was slowing down, and, when the clanging of the locomotive bell came back to her, she went out through the vestibule and leant on the platform-rails. Two huge wooden buildings, grain elevators, she supposed, with lines of sledges beneath them, flitted by. It was with a shiver she glanced at the little wooden town. It rose abruptly from the prairie, without sign of tree or garden to relieve its ugliness, an unsightly jumble of wooden houses in the midst of a vast white plain, which stretched gleaming to the far horizon, with not even a willow bluff to relieve its desolation. She set her lips tight as the cars ran slowly into the station. It consisted apparently of a stock-yard, a towering water-tank, and a weatherbeaten shed half-buried in snow, and was, as usual when the trains came in, crowded with men, who looked uncouth and shapeless in dilapidated skin-coats, and had hard faces, almost blackened by exposure to the frost. It was all strange and unfamiliar. She had not a friend in that grim, desolate land, and she felt the physical discomfort almost a relief by way of distraction from her overpowering sense of loneliness when the bitter cold struck through her with the keenness of steel.
Then the cars stopped, and her husband, who swung her down into the dusty snow beside the track, was forthwith surrounded by the crowd. Men with the snow-dust sprinkled like flour upon their shaggy furs clustered about him, and their harsh, drawling voices grated on her ears. They made it evident that he was one of them, for they greeted him with rude friendliness as "Charley". That was another shock to her prejudices. Leland, however, waved them aside, and they fell back a pace or two, gazing at her with unemotional inquiry in their eyes, until he laid his hand upon her arm.