He looked down upon her, and saw that her small face had bloomed into a vivacity and charm that startled him. Was it only the physical effort and pleasure of the climb? As for himself, it took all the power of a strong will to check the happy tumult in his heart.
Elizabeth asked him of his Saskatchewan journey. He described to her the growing town he hoped to represent--the rush of its new life.
"On one Sunday morning there was nothing--the bare prairie; by the next--so to speak--there was a town all complete, with a hotel, an elevator, a bank, and a church. That was ten years ago. Then the railway came; I saw the first train come in, garlanded and wreathed with flowers. Now there are eight thousand people. They have reserved land for a park along the river, and sent for a landscape gardener from England to lay it out; they have made trees grow on the prairie; they have built a high school and a concert hall; the municipality is full of ambitions; and all round the town, settlers are pouring in. On market day you find yourself in a crowd of men, talking cattle and crops, the last thing in binders and threshers, as farmers do all over the world. But yet you couldn't match that crowd in the old world."
"Which you don't know," put in Elizabeth, with her sly smile.
"Which I don't know," repeated Anderson meekly. "But I guess. And I am thinking of sayings of yours. Where in Europe can you match the sense of boundlessness we have here--boundless space, boundless opportunity? It often makes fools of us: it intoxicates, turns our heads. There is a germ of madness in this Northwest. I have seen men destroyed by it. But it is Nature who is the witch. She brews the cup."
"All very well for the men," Elizabeth said, musing--"and the strong men. About the women in this country I can't make up my mind."
"You think of the drudgery, the domestic hardships?"
"There are some ladies in the hotel, from British Columbia. They are in easy circumstances--and the daughter is dying of overwork! The husband has a large fruit farm, but they can get no service; the fruit rots on the ground; and the two women are worn to death."
"Aye," said Anderson gravely. "This country breeds life, but it also devours it."
"I asked these two women--Englishwomen--if they wanted to go home, and give it up. They fell upon me with scorn."