"Oh, never mind about me," she said gayly. "Tell me all about yourself. How's Gertie? And what has brought you to this part of the world? And what's Reggie Hornby doing here? And is Thingamajig still with you; you know, the hired man?"--The word "other" almost slipped out.--"What was his name, Trotter, wasn't it? Oh, my dear, don't sit there like a stuffed pig, but answer my questions, or I'll shake you."
"My dear child, I can't answer fifteen questions all at once!"
"Oh, Eddie, I'm so glad to see you! You are a perfect duck to come and see me."
"Now let me get a word in edgeways."
"I won't utter another syllable. But, for goodness' sake, hurry up. I want to know all sorts of things."
"Well, the most important thing is that I'm expecting to be a happy father in three or four months."
"Oh, Eddie, I'm so glad! How happy Gertie must be."
"She doesn't know what to make of it. But I guess she's pleased right enough. She sends you her love and says she hopes you'll follow her example very soon."
"I?" said Nora sharply. "But," she added with a return to her gay tone, "you've not told me what you're doing in this part of the world, anyway."
"Anyway?"
Nora blushed. "I've practically spoken to no one but Frank for months; it's natural that I should fall into his way of speaking."
"Well, when I got Frank's letter about the clearing-machine----"
"Frank has written to you?"
"Why, yes; didn't you know? He said there was a clearing-machine going cheap at Prentice. I've always thought I could make money down our way if I had one. They say you can clear from three to four acres a day with one. Frank thought it was worth my while to come and have a look at it and he said he guessed you'd be glad to see me."
"How funny of him not to say anything to me about it," said Nora, frowning once more.
"I suppose he wanted to surprise you. And now for yourself; how do you like being a married woman?"
"Oh, all right. But you haven't answered half my questions yet. Why has Reggie Hornby come with you?"
"Do you realize I've not seen you since before you were married?"
"That's so; you haven't, have you?"
"I've been a bit anxious about you. That's why, when Frank wrote about the clearing-machine, I didn't stop to think about it, but just came."
"It was awfully nice of you. But why has Reggie Hornby come?"
"Oh, he's going back to England."
"Is he?"
"Yes, he got them to send his passage money at last. His ship doesn't sail till next week, and he said he might just as well stop over here and say good-by to you."
"How has he been getting on?"
"How do you expect? He looks upon work as something that only damned fools do. Where's Frank?"
"Oh, he's out with Sid Sharp. Sid's our neighbor. He has the farm you passed on your way here."
"Getting on all right with him, Nora?"
"Why, of course," said Nora with just a suggestion of irritation in her voice.
"What's that boy doing all this time?" she asked, going over to the window and looking out. "He is slow, isn't he?"
But Marsh was not a man whom it was easy to side-track.
"It's a great change for you, this, after the sort of life you've been used to."
"I was rather hoping you'd have some letters for me," said Nora from the window. "I haven't had a letter for a long time."
As a matter of fact she had no reason to expect any, not having answered Miss Pringle's last and having practically no other correspondent. But the speech was a happy one, in that it created the desired diversion.
"There now!" said her brother with an air of comical consternation. "I've got a head like a sieve. Two came by the last mail. I didn't forward them, because I was coming myself."
"You don't mean to tell me you've forgotten them!"
"No; here they are."
Nora took them with a show of eagerness. "They don't look very exciting," she said, glancing at them. "One's from Agnes Pringle, the lady's companion that I used to know at Tunbridge Wells, you remember. And the other's from Mr. Wynne."
"Who's he?"
"Oh, he was Miss Wickham's solicitor. He wrote to me once before to say he hoped I was getting on all right. I don't think I want to hear from people in England any more," she said in a low voice, more to herself than to him, tossing the letters on the table.
"My dear, why do you say that?"
"It's no good thinking of the past, is it?"
"Aren't you going to read your letters?"
"Not now; I'll read them when I'm alone."
"Don't mind me."
"It's silly of me; but letters from England always make me cry."
"Nora! Then you aren't happy here."
"Why shouldn't I be?"
"Then why haven't you written to me but once since you were married?"
"I hadn't anything to say. And then," carrying the war into the enemy's quarter, "I'd been practically turned out of your house."
"I don't know what to make of you. Frank Taylor's kind to you and all that sort of thing, isn't he?"
"Very. But don't cross-examine me, there's a dear."
"When I asked you to come and make your home with me, I thought it mightn't be long before you married. But I didn't expect you to marry one of the hired men."
"Oh, my dear, please don't worry about me." Nora was about at the end of her endurance.
"It's all very fine to say that; but you've got no one in the world belonging to you except me."
"Don't, I tell you."
"Nora!"
"Now listen. We've never quarreled once since the first day I came here. Now are you satisfied?"
She said it bravely, but it was with a feeling of unspeakable relief that she saw Reggie Hornby at the door.
She certainly had never before been so genuinely glad to see him. As she smilingly held out her hand, her eye took in his changed appearance. Gone were the overalls and the flannel shirt, the heavy boots and broad belt. Before her stood the Reggie of former days in a well-cut suit of blue serge and spotless linen. She was surprised to find herself thinking, after all, men looked better in flannels.
"I was wondering what on earth you were doing with yourself," she said gayly.
"I say," he said, his eye taking in the bright little room, "this is a swell shack you've got."
"I've tried to make it look pretty and homelike."
"Helloa, what's this!" said Marsh, whose eye had fallen for the first time on the bowl of flowers.
"Aren't they pretty? I've only just picked them. They're mustard flowers."
"We call them weeds. Have you much of it?"
"Oh, yes; lots. Why?"
"Oh, nothing."
"Eddie tells me you're going home."
"Yes," said Reggie, seating himself and carefully pulling up his trousers. "I'm fed up for my part with God's own country. Nature never intended me to be an agricultural laborer."
"No? And what are you going to do now?"
"Loaf!" Mr. Hornby's tone expressed profound conviction.
"Won't you get bored?" smiled Nora.
"I'm never bored. It amuses me to watch other people do things. I should hate my fellow-creatures to be idle."
"I should think one could do more with life than lounge around clubs and play cards with people who don't play as well as oneself."
Hornby gave her a quick ironic look. "I quite agree with you," he said with his most serious air. "I've been thinking things over very seriously this winter. I'm going to look out for a middle-aged widow with money who'll adopt me."
"I recall that you have decided views about the White Man's Burden."
"All I want is to get through life comfortably. I don't mean to do a stroke more work than I'm obliged to, and I'm going to have the very best time I can."
"I'm sure you will," said Nora, smiling.
But her smile was a little mechanical. Somehow she could no longer
be genuinely amused at such sentiments which, in spite of his airy manner, she knew to be real. And yet, it was not so very long ago that she would have thought them perfectly natural in a man of his position. Somehow, her old standards were not as fixed as she had thought them.
"The moment I get back to London," continued Hornby imperturbably, "I'm going to stand myself a bang-up dinner at the Ritz. Then I shall go and see some musical comedy at the Gaiety, and after that, I'll have a slap-up supper at Romano's. England, with all thy faults, I love thee still!" he finished piously.
"I suppose it's being alone with the prairie all these months," said Nora, more to herself than him; "but things that used to seem clever and funny--well, I see them altogether differently now."
"I'm afraid you don't altogether approve of me," he said, quite unabashed.
"I don't think you have much pluck," said Nora, not unkindly.
"Oh, I don't know about that. I've as much as anyone else, I expect, only I don't make a fuss about it."
"Oh, pluck to stand up and let yourself be shot at."--She flushed slightly at the remembrance of Frank standing in this very room in front of the gun in her hand. Would she ever forget his laugh!--"But pluck to do the same monotonous thing day after day, plain, honest, hard work--you haven't got that sort of pluck. You're a failure and the worst of it is, you're not ashamed of it. It seems to fill you with self-satisfaction. Oh, you're incorrigible," she ended with a laugh.
"I am; let's let it go at that. I suppose there's nothing you want me to take home; I shall be going down to Tunbridge Wells to see mother. Got any messages?"
"I don't know that I have. Eddie has just brought me a couple of letters. I'll have a look at them first."
She went over to the table and picked up Miss Pringle's letter and opened it.
After reading a few lines, she gave a little cry.
"Oh!"
"What's the matter?" asked Marsh.
"What can she mean? Listen! 'I've just heard from Mr. Wynne about your good luck and I'm glad to say I have another piece of good news for you.'"
Dropping the letter, she tore open the other. It contained a check. She gave it a quick glance.
"A check for five hundred pounds! Oh, Eddie, listen." She read from Mr. Wynne's letter: "'Dear Miss Marsh--I have had several interviews with Mr. Wickham in relation to the late Miss Wickham's estate, and I ventured to represent to him that you had been very badly treated. Now that everything is settled, he wishes me to send you the enclosed check as some recognition of your devoted services to his late aunt--five hundred pounds."
"That's a very respectable sum," said Marsh, nodding his head sagely.
"I could do with that myself," remarked Hornby.
"I've never had so much money in all my life!"
"But what's the other piece of good news that Miss Stick-in-the-mud has for you?"
"Oh, I quite forgot. Where is it?" Her brother stooped and picked the fallen letter from the floor.
"Thank you. Um-um-um-um-um. Oh, yes, 'Piece of good news for you. I write at once so that you may make your plans accordingly. I told you in my last letter, did I not, of my sister-in-law's sudden death? Now my brother is very anxious that I should make my home with him. So I am leaving Mrs. Hubbard. She wishes me to say that if you care to have my place as her companion, she will be very pleased to have you. I have been with her for thirteen years and she has always treated me like an equal. She is very considerate and there is practically nothing to do but to exercise the dear little dogs. The salary is thirty-five pounds a year.'"
"But," said Marsh, looking at the envelope in his hand, "the letter is addressed to Miss Marsh. I'd intended to ask you about that; don't they know you're married?"
"No. I haven't told them."
"What a lark!" said Reggie, slapping his knee. "You could go back to Tunbridge Wells, and none of the old frumps would ever know you'd been married at all."
"Why, so I could!" said Nora in a breathless tone. She gave Hornby a strange look and turned toward the window to hide the fact that she had flushed to the roots of her hair.
Her brother gave her a long look.
"Just clear out for a minute, Reg. I want to talk with Nora."
"Right-o!" He disappeared in the direction of the shed.
"Nora, do you want to clear out?"
"What on earth makes you think that I do?"
"You gave Reg such a look when he mentioned it."
"I'm only bewildered. Tell me, did Frank know anything about this?"
"My dear, how could he?"
"It's most extraordinary; he was talking about my going away only a moment before you came."
"About your going away? But why?"
She realized that she had betrayed herself and kept silent.
"Nora, for goodness' sake tell me if there's anything the matter. Can't you see it's now or never? You're keeping something back from me. I could see it all along, ever since I came. Aren't you two getting on well together?"
"Not very," she said in a low, shamed tone.
"Why in heaven's name didn't you let me know."
"I was ashamed."
"But you just now said he was kind to you."
"I have nothing to reproach him with."
"I tell you I felt there was something wrong. I knew you couldn't be happy with him. A girl like you, with your education and refinement, and a man like him--a hired man! Oh, the whole thing would have been ridiculous if it weren't horrible. Not that he's not a good fellow and as straight as they make them, but---- Well, thank God, I'm here and you've got this chance."
"Eddie, what do you mean?"
"You're not fit for this life. I mean you've got your chance to go back home to England. For God's sake, take it! In six months' time, all you've gone through here will seem nothing but a hideous dream."
The expression of her face was so extraordinary, such a combination of fear, bewilderment, and something that was far deeper than dismay, that he stared at her for a moment without speaking.
"Nora, what's the matter!"
"I don't know," she said hoarsely.
But she did, she did.
At his words, the picture of the little shack--her home now--as it had looked the first time she saw it in all its comfortlessness, its untidy squalor, rose before her eyes. And she saw a lonely man clumsily busying himself about the preparation of an illy-cooked meal, and later sitting smoking in the desolate silence. She saw him go forth to his daily toil with all the lightness gone from his step, to return at nightfall, with a heaviness born of more than mere physical fatigue, to the same bleak bareness.
And she saw herself, back at Tunbridge Wells. No longer the mistress, but the underpaid underling. Eating once more off fine old china, at a table sparkling with silver and glass. But the bread was bitter, the bread of the dependent. And she came and went at another's bidding, and the yoke was not easy. She trod once more, round and round, in that little circle which she knew so well. She used to think that the walls would stifle her. How much more would they not stifle her now that she had known this larger freedom?
"I say," said Reggie's voice from the doorway, "here's someone coming to see you."
CHAPTER XVII
It was Mrs. Sharp, making her laborious way slowly up the path.
"Why," said Nora, in a low voice, "it's Mrs. Sharp, the wife of our neighbor. Whatever brings her here on foot! She never walks a step if she can help it."
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Sharp," she called.
Mrs. Sharp had apparently come on some sudden impulse. Usually, well as they knew each other by this time, she always made more or less of a toilet before having her husband drive her over. But to-day she had evidently come directly from her work. She wore a battered old skirt and a faded shirt-waist, none too clean. On her head was an old sunbonnet, the strings of which were tied in a hard knot under her fat chin.
"Come right in," said Nora cordially. "You do look warm."
"Good afternoon to you, M
rs. Taylor. Yes, I'm all in a perspiration. I've not walked so far--well, goodness alone knows when!"
"This is my brother," said Nora, presenting Eddie.
"Your brother? Is that who it is!"
"Why, you seem surprised."
Mrs. Sharp forbore any explanation for the moment. Sinking heavily into the rocking chair, she accepted with a grateful nod the fan that Nora offered her. There was nothing to do but to give her time to recover her breath. Nora and Eddie sat down and waited.
"I was so anxious," Mrs. Sharp at length managed to say, still panting--whether with exhaustion or emotion, Nora could not tell--between her sentences, "I simply couldn't stay indoors--another minute. I went out to see if I--could catch a sight of Sid. And I walked on, and on. And then I saw the rig what's--outside. And it gave me such a turn! I thought it was the inspector. I just had to come--I was that nervous----!"
"But why? Is anything the matter?" asked Nora, completely puzzled.
"You're not going to tell me you don't know about it? When Sid and Frank haven't been talking about anything else since Frank found it?"
"Found it? Found what?"
"The weed," said Mrs. Sharp simply.
"You've got it then," said Marsh, with a slight gesture of his head toward the table where Nora's flowers made a bright spot of color.
"It's worse here, at Taylor's. But we've got it, too."
"What does she mean?" Nora addressed herself to Eddie, abandoning all hope of getting anything out of her friend.
"We can't make out who reported us. It isn't as if we had any enemies," went on Mrs. Sharp gloomily, as if Nora wasn't present, or at least hadn't spoken. "It isn't as if we had any enemies," she repeated. "Goodness knows we've never done anything to anybody."
"Oh, there's always someone to report you. After all, it's not to be wondered at. No one's going to run the risk of letting it get on his own land."
"And she has them in the house as if they were flowers!" exclaimed Mrs. Sharp, addressing the ceiling.
"Eddie, I insist that you tell me what you two are talking about," demanded Nora hotly.
"My dear," said her brother, "these pretty little flowers which you've picked to make your shack look bright and--and homelike, may mean ruin."
The Land of Promise: A Comedy in Four Acts (1922) Page 17
