CHAPTER X
DISILLUSION
The long train was speeding smoothly across the vast white levels of Assiniboia, when Agatha, who sat by a window, looked up as the conductor strode through the car. Mrs. Hastings asked him a question, and he stopped a moment.
“Yes,” he said, “we’ll be in Clermont inside half an hour.”
He went on, and Mrs. Hastings smiled at Agatha.
“We’re a little late, and Gregory will be waiting for us in the station now,” she announced. “No doubt he’s got the wagon fixed up right, but I’d like to feel sure of it. There’s a long drive before us, and I want to reach the homestead before it’s dark.”
Agatha said nothing, but a faint tinge of color crept into her cheeks, and Mrs. Hastings was glad to see it, for she had noticed that the girl was looking pale and haggard. The strain of the last few months that she had spent in England was beginning to tell on her. She had borne it courageously, but a reaction had set in, and the trip had been fatiguing. The Scarrowmania had plunged along, bows under, against fresh northwesterly gales most of the way across the Atlantic, and there is very little comfort on board a small, deeply-loaded steamer when she rolls her rails in, and lurches with thudding screw swung clear over big, steep-sided combers. Moreover, Agatha had scarcely slept during the few days and nights that she had spent in the train. It takes time to become accustomed to the atmosphere of a heated sleeper, and since she had landed she had been in a state of not unnatural nervous tension.
She had found it difficult to preserve an outward serenity, the previous day. When, at last, the great train ran into the depôt at Winnipeg, where Gregory had arranged to meet them, it was with a thrill of expectancy and relief that she stood upon the car platform. There was, however, no sign of Gregory, and, though Wyllard handed her a telegram from him a few minutes later, the fact that he had not arrived had a depressing effect on her. Quiet as she usually was, the girl was highly strung. Something had gone wrong with Hawtrey’s wagon while he was driving in to the railroad, and as the result of it he had missed the Atlantic train. She could not blame him for the accident, but for all that his absence was an unpleasant shock.
Feeling that her companions’ eyes were upon her, she turned, and looking out of the window found no encouragement in what she saw. The snow had gone, and a vast expanse of grass ran back to the horizon! But it was a dingy, grayish-white, and not green, as it had been in England. The sky was low and gray, too, and the only thing that broke the dreary monotony of lifeless color was the formless, darker smear of a birch bluff that rose out of the empty levels. Her heart throbbed unpleasantly fast as the few remaining minutes slipped away. She started when a dingy mass of something that looked like buildings lifted itself above the prairie.
“The Clermont elevators,” said Mrs. Hastings. “We’ll be in directly.”