“I think you have,” she said, with gentleness.
So, tightening my grip on the reins, I continued doggedly: “Then, even at the risk of seeming a presumptuous fool, you shall hear it all. This new land is for the strong and enterprising, who will stake their best on success within it, and with the hope I have before me I must succeed. So 107 while brain and sinew hold out neither drought, nor frost, nor hardship shall turn me aside until—until I am more equal in worldly possessions with Colonel Carrington. Others have risen from obscurity to hold many acres, and somehow I feel that I shall do so too. But if I owned half the Dominion it would be little to offer Miss Carrington, and without her my present holding would content me.” Then I ended slowly, “I wonder whether, even in that case, there would be any chance for me?”
My companion’s face was grave under the moonlight, but she touched my arm with a friendly gesture, as she answered: “Those are a young man’s words, and I suppose some would call them foolish; but though I am old I like the spirit in them. After all, even in these days, we have not done with romance, and a stout heart is often better than land and property. Grace is like you in many ways; she takes life seriously, and I fancy she sees, as I do, that some of us are spending our best on pleasure in Carrington. My brother is a stern, proud man, and yet, as you say, the good things come to those who can fight and wait for them. More I cannot tell you.”
“Thank you, Miss Carrington,” I answered, feeling that for ever afterward she had made me her servant. “Now, please forget it all until some day I say the same thing to Colonel Carrington; and forgive me for ever telling you,” but her eyes were troubled as she turned her face away.
We reached the manor safely, but I caught no glimpse of Grace, and Colonel Carrington hardly troubled to thank me, while Harry pitied the team when I led it into our stable. A few days afterward, when we spent all of one afternoon discussing finances and our program for spring, he agreed with me when, contrary to my usual caution, I suggested that we should make a plunge that year by purchasing a gang-plow and hiring more horses, then, giving a 108 bond on the homestead and expected crop, sink the last dollar we could raise in sowing the utmost acreage and breaking more sod on the free land we had pre-empted. There was a sporting instinct in Harry which made him willing to run risks that I generally should have avoided.
Now, however, I was bent on playing a bold game, trusting in the axiom that those who nothing venture cannot expect to win. Also, on the prairie the credit system is universal, and though some abuse it, it has its advantages. For instance, the settler may obtain seed, implements, and provisions on a promise to pay with interest after harvest, and thus he is enabled to break an extra quantity of virgin soil. If the crop is good all benefit alike—dealer, maker of implements, and grower of wheat; while if the grain fails, instead of one man to bear it there are several to divide the loss.
So we pledged our credit up to the hilt, and, though at times I grew grave as I wondered what would happen if there should be hail or frost, we commenced work in earnest with the first of the thaw, and drilled in grain enough to leave us an ample profit if all went well. Then we would double our sowing next year, and, so Harry said, in a few seasons rise to affluence. It was a simple program, and fortunes have been made in that way; but, as we were to find, it also leads occasionally to disaster.
It was a gray day in spring, and a cold wind swept the grasses as I stood beside the double yoke of oxen and the great breaker-plow, when Colonel Carrington, who was passing that way, rode toward me across the prairie. While I wondered what his errand might be, I saw two mounted figures outlined against the somber sky on the crest of a distant rise, whom I recognized as Grace and Captain Ormond. The Colonel rode a splendid bay horse, and after the first greeting he sat looking down at me ironically 109 awhile, erect, soldierly, and immaculately neat down to the burnished stirrups and the toes of his speckless boots. In no circumstances did the Colonel forget that he once commanded a famous regiment, and now ruled drastically over Carrington, while I must have appeared a sufficiently homely object, in battered slouch hat and torn blue overalls, with the mire clinging to my leggings.
“You are staking heavily on the weather this year; I wonder what for,” he said, glancing down the long furrows, and I felt there was a warning in it, for this man seldom wasted words. “The last time I passed it struck me that you had better, as they say here, go slow and not risk a surety on the chance of what you can never attain. It takes capital to farm on a large scale, you know. By the way, I came to tell you that we will not want the disc-harrows, so you can keep them until your work is finished, and as Miss Carrington—Miss Grace Carrington—is going to England shortly we shall be occupied with preparation for some time. This will save you from wasting precious hours riding over just now in the busy season. Well, I must join the others. Good-day to you.”
He wheeled his horse with a parting salutation, a slender figure waved a hand to me from the crest of the rise before it sank below the skyline, and that was the last I saw of Grace Carrington for many a day, while breathing hard I watched the horseman grow smaller across the prairie. Her father sometimes delighted to speak in metaphor, and I could not fail to recognize that it was a plain hint he had, perhaps in grim kindness, given me. For a moment I wondered whether I should have made him listen in turn, and I was glad I had not, for his words stung me like a whip, and it would not have helped matters if I had spoken my mind to him. Then, shaking myself together, I called to the oxen, reflecting that many a formerly poor 110 man had married the daughter of even a greater man than Colonel Carrington, while if it were a matter of land and money that divided us, every extra furrow brought me so much nearer to her. Still, I was graver than usual, even until the plowing was done, and Harry, not knowing the reason, commented satirically upon it.