SOON after the garments of Barbara McNair dawned upon the congregation, her husband bought three hundred acres of land at three dollars an acre. There are those who say a man owning eight hundred and forty acres of land should be happy. Alex McNair was not. There was in his flesh one great thorn—that Glasgow wife. She had lived through the autumn and the terrible winter, waiting for spring. And now that spring was here, what was it? Only an oozy wet waste, with patches of green in the lower places, and winds shrieking always across flat desolations. Near the sty, a sagging haystack of a barn, and a couple of bony cows trampling dead grasses deeper into the mire of the dooryard. If only there had been even a little white house, and a fence, and a few flowers sending up their endearing shoots! But this! And her from Glasgow!
Words failed her.
Had she not set forth day by day and hour by hour conscientiously, the necessity of a new house? Yet in the face of her demands, her man had gone to town to buy more wilderness. If she had known that spring that Dod was to sell part of that land for six hundred dollars an acre, her contempt for her husband’s folly would scarcely have[152] been less hot. There he was, driving into the yard now! She went to the door and greeted him.
“You didn’t buy it?” she asked.
“Did I not say I would buy it?” he answered doggedly.
Not a change of expression passed over her face. She stood watching him unhitch his team. She had never before been so much interested in that process, having always avoided the barn.
The next day, when he was in the field, and Dod was hitching up, she went out and watched him. Would he show her how he did that? she asked. She thought she ought to know, she said. Which were the gentlest horses? And which harness did they take? She learned where it all hung in the barn. Dod liked teaching an old person. It wasn’t any trick to hitch a horse to the wagon, he said. You put this under the belly, so. And the lines through here, taking them from here, thus. She practiced. She grew proficient. She waited.
One day in early May her husband rode away horseback to the Keiths’, to pay back one of the many days of labor he owed that family. He left home at daylight, and Dod went to school. Then Barbara began.
When McNair came home that evening, Dod asked, lonesomely,
“Where’s mother?”
“Is she not here?”
“She is not.”
[153]“She’ll be gone to Chirstie’s. Or McCreaths’. Who came for her?”
“She took the team and went herself.”
“You’re daft! Her take a team!”
But the team was gone. The barn was as empty as the house. Dod made a fire in the fireplace, and put the kettle on. Then the father made a discovery that the son had made some time ago. The cupboard was bare. Not a bite in it. Not a crumb of cake.
McNair didn’t like that. She might have told them where she was going. She ought to have come back in time to have the supper ready. He hated a cold house. He went to his tobacco box. At least that was always ready for a hungry man. He opened it, and found a strange white paper in it. A note from his wife. A fine note! “I can’t live in a sty,” it said. “I have gone back to Scotland. Jeannie is with Chirstie. Barbara Ferguson.”
Back to Scotland!
A woman alone!
Starting away with his team! She was daft! He rushed into the bedroom, as soon as he began to realize her meaning. Were her hat and cloak there? They were not! What was this? The kists not one on top of the other, as usual! Spreading all over the room! And empty! Nothing left in them! He rushed to the kitchen. The kist that set there was empty, too, more empty if possible than the others! He sat down.
[154]He was outraged. He was speechless. That woman hadn’t been able to lift those boxes alone into the wagon, so she had taken all their contents and left them. Such cunning! Such deceit! And had he not paid all her passage from Scotland! She had left him! Left him, Alex McNair! Without saying a word! Her so quiet, and all! The whole clan would know all about it! They would all have seen her passing! A woman alone! Had anyone ever before heard of such a thing? Certainly not in those parts! Everybody wondering where his wife was off to! Oh, Jeannie would never have played him so base a trick!
Dod came into the room. McNair stuffed the note hastily into the box.
“Your mother has gone to town,” he murmured, meekly.
Dod heard that with surprise. Presently he volunteered that he saw now why she had wanted to learn how to hitch up the horses. Had she indeed learned all that from him? his father gasped. Oh, the depth of deceit in her! And he had paid her way from Glasgow! Dod made disconsolate cornmeal for their supper, forgetting to put salt in it. To think of that woman ridding the cupboard of its last crumb! McNair went to the barn and pretended to work, after the meal, being too excited to sit still. Back to Scotland! Had ever anyone heard the like! Everyone would be laughing at him. A rich wife, indeed! Oh, he understood now why the canny widowers of Scotland[155] had meekly let him take this jewel of a woman away to America. They must have known her!
There was but one thing to be done. He would rise early, long before dawn, and pursue her, getting out of the neighborhood before anyone would be awake to see him pass. Her with his good horses in the town, not knowing enough, maybe, to give them a drink at the end of the journey! If she ever imagined he would give her a cent to get back with, how greatly mistaken she was. He would surely show her who was master here.
He found her the next afternoon, in the hall of one of those long, shanty-like hotels which comprised the town, found her in the very act of making a bargain with a man to make her new boxes to take the place of those she had so extravagantly abandoned. They faced each other in her room, he, tall, gaunt, black-eyed, ragged, she, small, dainty, red-haired, bedecked. Her placidness, as usual, disarmed him. He began;
“You can’t go back to Scotland! Are you daft?”
“I canna’ live in a sty.”
They were off, then. He urged decency, morality, economy, honesty, pride, race, the waning reputation of Glasgow. After each argument she simply said, like one born foolish;
“I canna’ live in a sty.”
It was a deadlock, till he demanded angrily where she expected to get money for the journey.[156] At her answer he surrendered. It fairly took the life out of him. She certainly had not expected to get it from him, thank you! She knew him too well. She had money enough with her to take her comfortably to her home in Glasgow. Did he suppose that she was one to come to the wilds without knowing how she might get back? She had kept it all—all that gold, mind you!—in the lining of her muff.
That woman had come thinking she might not stay! He, Alex McNair, had been, as it were, married on probation. And him a Presbyterian!
He asked hopelessly what kind of a house she wanted.
She replied promptly that she wanted three good big rooms downstairs, and two upstairs, a wee porch, all painted white, except the green shutters, with closets and windows like Chirstie’s and besides a wee white house for the fowls. All this was to be bought to-day, at once.
The Lord preserve us! Why, there wasn’t a painted fowl house in the state!
The train left for Glasgow at seven the night.
He couldn’t buy all that in a day, could he? He had no money!
He could sell the last great plot he had bought.
Was she daft? Did she suppose he could sell it in a day?
Why could he not sell it in one day? Hadn’t he bought it in one? She would call to the man to bring in those boxes.
[157]He would buy the lumber as soon as he got around to it. Couldn’t she trust him to do it?
He hadn’t told her in the first place that he lived in a sty, had he? She felt the inside of her muff carefully.
The next day in the dusk they drove into Wully’s together, having a wagon whose strange shape would have excited the curiosity of the most philosophical, with that same long, uneven thing all covered with blankets and tucked in, such a load as no man ever hauled, and plainly the same thing that she had taken with her the day before. McNair was apparently in a bad humor. How could the two who came out to welcome them in, know that the nearer he had got to his home, the more he dreaded the explanation he would have to give of his wife’s desertion. But he had not yet learned all the depth of that lintie! Was she embarrassed? Not she! She began immediately telling the news, in that hesitating, ingratiating way of hers. They were to have a new house! The lumber was to be hauled at once. She was that glad she hadn’t been able to wait for Alex, but had gone in ahead, to see about it. It was all settled. Just about like Wully’s, it was to be. But a little larger. With a white fence. And a wee white fowl house. They had bought even the paint. And, having had some time on her hands, she had found this wee pair of shoes for the baby. No, they couldn’t come in. Let Wully just hold wee Johnnie up till she would[158] see if they were the right size. Out of that confounded muff came the shoes. They fitted. Well, the McNairs would just take their wee Jeannie and be going on. She had so wanted them to hear her good n............