"Proof! What more proof do I want? When did ever Beulah carry on like this before? Didn't she always do as she was told? And haven't they been thick as molasses this while back? Wasn't it over wasting time with her that Jim got fired, and not a word of admission of the real facts from him? What more do you want than that? And on top of it all you help her away, and keep it a secret from me as long as you can. I daresay you knew their plans from the first. You thought I wouldn't be interested in that, either."
"I didn't know it," she protested, "and I don't believe it. I don't believe either Beulah or Jim had any such thought in their head. But even if they did, Jim Travers is as decent a young man as there is in Plainville district, and you've nothing to be ashamed of except your own temper, that drove them away in the way they went."
"I won't listen to that kind of talk from you any longer," said Harris sternly. "I'll chase the young reprobates to earth, if it takes all summer. And unless you can clear yourself of being mixed up in this—well, there'll be something to settle on that score, too. Hitch up the drivers, Allan, and be quick about it."
"You're not going to leave your ploughing, are you?" asked his wife. The words sprang to her lips without any misintent. It was such an unusual thing for her husband, on any account, to leave the farm work unfinished. The practice on the Harris homestead was work first, all other considerations second.
"That's enough of your sarcasm," he snapped. "I would think when our name is threatened with a disgrace like this you would be as anxious to defend it as I am. How is it you go back on me in a moment like this? You're not the woman you once were, Mary."
"And you're not the man you once were, John," she answered. "Oh, can't you see that we're just reaping what has been sown—the crop we're been raising through ail these years? Beulah's very life has been crying out for action, for scope, for room, for something that would give her a reason for existence, that would put a purpose into her life, and we've not tried to answer that cry. I blame myself as much as you, John, perhaps more, because I should have—read her heart—I should have seen the danger signals long ago. But I was so busy, I didn't think. That's the trouble, John, we've been so busy, both of us, we haven't taken time to keep up with her. The present generation is not the past; what was enough for you and me isn't enough for our children. It doesn't do any good to scold—scolding doesn't change conditions; but if we'd stopped and thought and studied over them we might have changed them—or cured them. We didn't, John; you were too busy with your wheat and your cattle, and I was too busy with my house-work, and what have we made of it? We've gathered some property together, and our cares have grown in proportion, but that which was more to us than all the property in the world we have lost—because we valued it less." The tears were slowly coursing down her cheeks, and her thin, work-worn arms were stealing about his neck. "Don't think, dear," she whispered, "that I'm indifferent, or that this hurts me less than you, or that I would shield myself from one iota of my just blame, but let us face the fact that it has been our mistake rather than Beulah's."
He removed her arms, not ungently. "I never thought it would come to this," he said. "I thought I humoured her every way I could. As for our hard work—well, work makes money, and I noticed Beulah could spend her share. There was no protesting about the work that earned the money when she wanted a new hat or a new dress, and she generally got what she wanted."
"You don't understand, John. It wasn't the work, it was the making a god of work, and giving it so much of our lives that there was none left for her. That's why she looked somewhere else—if she has looked somewhere else."
"Allan works as hard and harder than ever Beulah did, and Allan doesn't feel that way about it."
"That's true," she admitted, "but Allan's ambition is work. He works and is satisfied, but Beulah thinks, and is not satisfied. It's the difference in their nature, and we didn't take it into consideration." In every phrase she tried to link his blame with hers, that the burden might unite instead of separate them.