BARBARA McNAIR had watched Wully and Chirstie driving away towards Wully’s home that afternoon after her arrival at the sty in the slough. It was raining then, and it rained for nearly six weeks. She stood looking after them till they were out of sight. Then she went to the other little window. There she shut her lips tightly—regarded what her eyes discovered, two bony cows, shivering, it seemed to her, in the blown rain, trying to find shelter from the wind by huddling against the haystack that was one side of the barn. The rain was gray and sullen, the prairies sodden and brown; the cows had trampled the ground between the house and the barn into mud, into which they sank knee deep. She stood contemplating. The rain continued blowing about in imprisoning drab veils. Finally she turned away, and sat down weakly. From where she sat, she saw the dripping cows shivering. She sat huddled down. She seemed trying to cuddle up against herself. Her hands, folded in her lap, seemed the only sight not terrifying that her eyes might consider. Presently the silence of the room was broken with a little sob. She looked up. Chirstie’s little sister, standing near the window, was just turning[120] away from it. She had been trying to see something of Chirstie. She felt deserted. Big tears were running slowly down her face. She looked like a neglected, ragged, little heartbroken waif.
Barbara started from her chair. That moment her face showed she had forgotten the surrounding desolations. She ran and gathered the child into her arms. She sat down with her in her lap. The little Jeannie, finding herself caressed, began crying lustily. The new mother kissed her. She caressed her. She soothed her, coaxing her into quietness. She told her little stories. She sang little songs, examining thoughtfully the poor little garments she wore. Dusk came upon them as they sat consoling one another. Barbara demanded help then of the child. Jeannie must show her where all the things were kept which were needed for the supper. They would make some little cakes together. Jeannie grew important and happy.
Dod’s eyes fairly bulged with amazement when he saw that supper table. Nothing of the sort had been set before him in that kitchen. His new mother made no apologies. She had been thinking to herself that it had been food of the most primitive sort that had been set before her by Chirstie on the three occasions upon which they had sat down to eat since she had arrived; doubtless Chirstie wasn’t feeling very well, and she was at best but a young housekeeper, whose omissions one could easily overlook. Barbara was pleased with what she had managed to prepare on the strange stove[121] and in the newfangled oven. She saw her husband scowling at the table.
“I dinna like so many cakes!” he remarked severely. One must begin with these women at once, he seemed to be thinking. He had forgotten apparently that his bride came from the very land of cakes, though he wasn’t to be allowed to forget it often in the future.
She said apologetically;
“They’re not so good, I doubt. I couldn’t find any currants in the house. When we get currants you’ll like them fine.”
“There’s too much in them now!” he declared bravely. “We don’t have cake every day.”
“I do,” she said placidly. “I like a wee cake with my tea.”
Alex McNair was not entirely a stingy man—not the most stingy man in the neighborhood. He wasn’t like Andy McFee, for example, who was so careful of expenditure that when his corn got a little high in the summer he always took off his shirt and hoed the weeds in his skin, to save the wear of the cloth; and who persisted in habits of frugality so that, in his old age, when he rode about in his grandson’s Pierce-Arrow, he removed his shoes upon seating himself, to save them from harm, and persisted in this till an able grand-daughter-in-law urged him not to misuse shoe-strings with such extravagance. Nor was he like the elder John McKnight, who when he went to mill always took with him a hen tied in a little[122] basket, to eat the oats that fell from his horse’s midday feeding. McNair thought such extremes foolish. He even laughed at McKnight’s device. How much easier it was simply to gather the oats up by hand, as he did, dust and all, and to take them home for the hens in his pocket. By this plan the oats were saved, and the hen had a whole day at home to convert useless angleworms into salable eggs. He was not, this proves, an entirely stingy man, yet—the idea of cakes like those for just a common supper! He would have to show that woman his disapproval, his disgust, his sharp pain at such extravagance.
He did his best then, and in the days that followed, to impress her. But she was difficult. She never lifted her voice in perturbation, and she never heeded a word he said. When the howling of the wind woke him up at night, he would hear her sighing, “It’s still raining!” When she looked shrinkingly out of the window in the morning, she murmured, “It’s still at it!” When he came in for dinner, she would ask, “Does it never stop?” At supper she sighed, like a weary child, “’Tis a fine land, this!”—for all the world as if he was to blame for the weather. She had been housekeeping for him but two days, when he pointed out the woodpile to her. “Bring the wood into the house,” she said, as if that was a man’s task. “I don’t like going out in the rain.” “The rain’ll not hurt you,” he assured her, going about his work. When he came in at noon, the fire was out, the room was cold, and[123] she and the little girl were asleep and comfortable in bed. “I don’t like going out in the wet,” she repeated simply, as if she had done nothing outrageous in defying him. He had to wait for dinner till the wood was brought in, and dried, and the fire made. The next day she refused, in the same passive, happy way, to bring water from the slough well. She simply remarked she wouldn’t think of going so far in the mud, and waited till he brought the water. He never knew that she had hidden enough water for thirsty hours in a jug under the bed, and was prepared to stand a long siege. And then his boots were to be tallowed and dried near the fire. His wife Jeannie had always tallowed his boots. The new wife looked mildly surprised that he should have expected such a duty from her, and left the boots standing, muddy and soaked, just where they were, till he was driven to caring for them himself. And she kept asking him hour by hour, mildly, when he was going to town for her other boxes. She asked him so often, so kindly, that he was forced in despair to attempt the journey through the rain, thinking that maybe if she had something to sew, she would cease making cakes by the hour. And when he started, she gave him a great list of groceries to bring back, and ordered more sugar than his family ate in years. He growled at this—just growled. There had been enough sugar in the house when she came to last till spring. They could not use sugar as if it were[124] water! Why not? she asked, simply. Wasn’t he a great lord, with acres? She liked sugar.
He brought back with him only a little sugar, and most of it the coarse brown kind, and a jug of sorghum which was to last till spring. She fell upon her boxes eagerly, and adorned the sty amazingly with rich looking things which never really seemed at home there. She made a new dress for her little stepdaughter at once, and set about making Chirstie’s baby a robe. She seemed almost to have resigned herself to the deluge. She spoke with gayety about her ark to the children, and told them to keep their eyes open for the dove. And then, just when she seemed to be getting settled, the winter set in.
Rains she had seen, and could understand, and snows, too, in moderate fashion. But snow like this, continuing; winds like these, whirling darkening wild clouds of whiteness to burst against windows and doors, rocking the little sty as if it were an insecure cradle—winds with horror howling in them, howling all night through the shaken darkness, triumphant, unconquerable winds against which no life could stand—she had never imagined anything like them. She had never before risen in the morning to find doors drifted tight shut, windows banked with white. She had never seen men burrow out of windows to dig open their doors, and tunnel a way to their barns. The well was as distant as if it had been in Patagonia. The newborn calf froze in the barn with its first breath. The[125] men’s ears froze, their hands froze, their feet froze. Everything in the house froze solid. The bread had to be thawed out in a steamer over a kettle before they could get a bite to eat in the morning. The milk had to be pounded into little bits and melted. The cold—its intensity, its cruelty, staggered her.
Her work would be done early in the morning, while the men were yet melting snow at the stove to water their beasts—that is, all the work she chose to do. To conquer those long, dark hours she worked away on the baby dress. When it was all finished—alas, too soon for one having endless time to beguile—she looked at it with satisfaction. She had made every stitch of it by hand. It was a yard and a half long, with seven clusters of seven tiny tucks around the skirt, with hand embroidery between some of the rows, and darned net between others. It was ruffled and shirred, and smocked and featherstitched and hemstitched, eyeleted and piped and gathered. And a tiny darned net bonnet, which went with it, was worthy of it. It had taken many weeks to complete it. And always when her eyes were worn by the fine stitching in the flickering candle light, she made cakes, for a change, sparing white sugar with noble economy, using only brown sugar, whatever eggs were unfrozen, fresh butter, and thick cream, and raisins and currants while they lasted.
From the day that Wully took Chirstie home, until the first week of January, Barbara McNair had but one visitor in her prison, and that one was[126] her sister-in-law, Libby Keith. She had to turn to Dod to companionship, which no boy could have grudged to so unfailing a source of cakes as his new mother. His Spartan scorn of the cold brought her, many a time, near to tears. He was anointing his frozen ears one morning, and when she cried out in pity of him, he remarked indifferently that this was nothing. She ought to have seen last year, the time his mother died. With what keen sympathy could she appreciate that story now. She asked without hesitation;
“It was no colder than this, was it?” She couldn’t imagine anything worse. Oh, said Dod, they were alone last winter, and his mother and Chirstie had sometimes to help shovel out. But they had had Chirstie’s husband, hadn’t they, to do that hard work for them? Indeed they hadn’t! Dod himself had been the man of the farm. Wully had come but lately. Not lately, surely, she exclaimed. Yes, only in harvest. They had been married right in harvest. He was sure of it. What month would harvest be in this land? she had asked hurriedly. He informed her, and took up his story. He had had to go alone that morning after his mother’s death to his uncle’s, to get help, and hadn’t it taken them three hours to get the sled over the two miles of drifted snow. He told all the tale, even how the little sister was playing alone, and Chirstie had fainted.
All that afternoon there came little words of pity to Barbara McNair as she fondled her little[127] Jeannie; sometimes, when she was making that great, most magnificent cake which appeared unashamed on the supper table, she had to stop and wipe her eyes. Alex McNair had but begun to disapprove of that delicacy when she ordered him so sharply to hold his tongue that he all but obeyed. And after supper, she made him lift down her kists, which because of the narrowness of the sty had to sit one above another in her bedroom. She opened the third one from the top, and took out a dress, wine-colored and soft, and looked at it carefully a long time, examining the seams. Then she sat down, and by candle light began to rip it apart, basque and polonaise and all, to make a dress for the erring Chirstie.
It was the next afternoon that she saw a bobsled drive in. She could see the bundled driver when he was yet some distance from the house, but as he drew near, and stopped, she saw another great beshawled bundle rise from behind the sideboards of the sled. This bundle came at once towards the house, wiped its feet carefully on the doorstep, and, unwrapping layer after layer of covering, revealed itself Isobel McLaughlin. Mrs. McNair could hardly have been more surprised if she had seen an angel descending from heaven. That any woman would be riding around the country in weather like this had not entered her mind. Her concern seemed mildly amusing to her guest, who quickly disclaimed any conduct especially praiseworthy.
It wasn’t really cold now, she explained. It was[128] thawing. This was what is called the January thaw. A body can’t just stay co............