The Land of Promise: A Comedy in Four Acts (1922) Page 9

  "He's got no right to say impudent things to me!"

  "Don't you see he's only having a joke with you?" he said soothingly.

  "He shouldn't joke. He's got no sense of humor."

  She made a furious gesture, and the cup she was in the act of wiping flew out of her hand, crashing in a thousand pieces on the floor, just as Gertie returned.

  "Butter fingers!"

  "I'm so sorry," said Nora in a colorless tone. She was raging inwardly at having allowed that beast of a man to put her in such a temper. Why couldn't she control herself? How undignified to bandy words with a person she so despised. It was hardly the moment for Gertie to take her to task for carelessness. But Gertie was not the person to consider other moods than her own.

  "You clumsy thing! You're always doing something wrong."

  "Oh, don't worry; I'll pay for it."

  "Who wants you to pay for it? Do you think I can't afford to pay for a miserable cup! You might say you're sorry: that's all I want you to do."

  "I said I was sorry."

  "No, you didn't."

  "I heard her, Gertie," broke in Ed.

  "She said she was sorry as if she was doing me a favor," said Gertie, turning furiously on the would-be peacemaker.

  "You don't expect me to go down on my knees to you, do you? The cup's worth twopence."

  "It isn't the value I'm thinking about, it's the carelessness."

  "It's only the third thing I've broken since I've been here."

  If Nora had been in a calmer mood herself she would not have been so stupid as to attempt to palliate her offense. Her offer of replacing the miserable cup only added fuel to the flame of Gertie's resentment.

  "You can't do anything!" she stormed. "You're more helpless than a child of six. You're all the same, all of you."

  "You're not going to abuse the whole British nation because I've broken a cup worth twopence, are you?"

  "And the airs you put on. Condescending isn't the word. It's enough to try the patience of a saint."

  "Oh, shut up!" said Marsh. He went over to his wife and laid a hand on her shoulder. She shook him off impatiently.

  "You've never done a stroke of work in your life, and you come here and think you can teach me everything."

  "I don't know about that," said Nora, in a voice which by comparison with Gertie's seemed low but which was nevertheless perfectly audible to every person in the room. "I don't know about that, but I think I can teach you manners."

  If she had lashed the other woman across the face with a whip, she couldn't have cut more deeply. She knew that, and was glad. Gertie's face turned gray.

  "How dare you say that! How dare you! You come here, and I give you a home. You sleep in my blankets and you eat my food and then you insult me." She burst into a passion of angry tears.

  "Now then, Gertie, don't cry. Don't be so silly," said her husband as he might have spoken to an angry child.

  "Oh, leave me alone," she flashed back at him. "Of course you take her part. You would! It's nothing to you that I have made a slave of myself for you for three whole years. As soon as she comes along and plays the lady----"

  She rushed from the room. After a moment, Ed followed after her.

  There was an awkward pause. Nora stood leaning against the table swinging the dishcloth in her hand, a smile of malicious triumph on her face. Gertie had tried it on once too often. But she had shown her that one could go too far. She would think twice before she attempted to bully her again, especially before other people. She stooped down and began to gather up the broken pieces of earthenware scattered about her feet. Her movement broke the spell which had held the three men paralyzed as men always are in the presence of quarreling women.

  "I reckon I might be cleaning myself," said Taylor, rising from his chair. "Time's getting on. You're coming, Ben?"

  "Yes, I'm coming. I suppose you'll take the mare?"

  "Yep, that's what Ed said this morning."

  They went out toward the stables without a word to Nora.

  "Well, are you enjoying the land of promise as much as you said that I should?" Hornby asked with a smile.

  "We've both made our beds, I suppose we must lie in them," said Nora, shaking the broken pieces out of her apron into a basket that stood in the corner.

  "Do you remember that afternoon at Miss Wickham's when I came for the letter to your brother?"

  "I hadn't much intention of coming to Canada then myself."

  "Well, I don't mind telling you that I mean to get back to England the very first opportunity that comes," he said, pacing up and down the floor. "I'm willing to give away my share of the White Man's Burden with a package of chewing gum."

  "You prefer the Effete East?" smiled Nora, putting a couple of irons on the stove.

  "Ra-ther. Give me the degrading influence of a decadent civilization every time."

  "Your father will be pleased to see you, won't he?"

  "I don't think! Of course I was a damned fool ever to leave Winnipeg."

  "I understand you didn't until you had to."

  "Say," said Hornby, pausing in his walk, "I want to tell you: your brother behaved like a perfect brick. I sent him your letter and told him I was up against it--d'you know I hadn't a bob? I was jolly glad to earn half a dollar digging a pit in a man's garden. Bit thick, you know!"

  "I can see you," laughed Nora.

  "Your brother sent me the fare to come on here and told me I could do the chores. I didn't know what they were. I soon found it was doing all the jobs it wasn't anybody else's job to do. And they call it God's own country!"

  "I think you're falling into the ways of the country very well, however!" retorted Nora as she struggled across to the table with the heavy ironing-board.

  "Do you? What makes you think that?"

  "You can stand there and smoke your pipe and watch me carry the ironing-board about."

  "I beg your pardon. Did you want me to help you?"

  "Never mind. It would remind me of home."

  "I suppose I shall have to stick it out at least a year, unless I can humbug the mater into sending me enough money to get back home with."

  "She won't send you a penny--if she's wise."

  "Oh, come now! Wouldn't you chuck it if you could?"

  "And acknowledge myself beaten," said Nora, with a flash of spirit. "You don't know," she went on after ironing busily a moment, "what I went through before I came here. I tried to get another position as lady's companion. I hung about the agents' offices. I answered advertisements. Two people offered to take me; one without any salary, the other at ten shillings a week and my lunch. I, if you please, was to find myself in board, lodging and clothes on that magnificent sum! That settled me. I wrote Eddie and said I was coming. When I'd paid my fare, I had eight pounds in the world--after ten years with Miss Wickham. When he met me at the station at Dyer----"

  "Depot; you forget."

  "My whole fortune consisted of seven dollars and thirty-five cents; I think it was thirty-five."

  "What about that wood you're splitting, Reg?" said a voice from the doorway.

  Eddie came in fumbling nervously in his pockets. He detested scenes and had some reason to think that he was having more than his share of them in the last few days.

  "Has anyone seen my tobacco! Oh, here it is," he said, taking his pouch from his pocket. "Come, Reg, you'd better be getting on with it."

  "Oh, Lord, is there no rest for the wicked?" exclaimed Hornby as he lounged lazily to the door.

  "Don't hurry yourself, will you?"

  "Brilliant sarcasm is just flying about this house to-day," was his parting shot as he banged the door behind him.

  CHAPTER IX

  Nora understood perfectly that her brother had been forced to take a stand as a result of this last quarrel with Gertie. Well, she was glad of it. Things certainly could not go on in this way forever. Of course he would have to make a show, at least, of taking his wife's part. But, equally of course, he wou
ld understand her position perfectly. However much his new life and his long absence from England might have changed him, at bottom their points of view were still the same. He and she, so to speak, spoke a common language; she and Gertie did not.

  Gertie had probably been pouring out her accumulation of grievances to him for the last half hour. Now it was her turn. She would show that she was, as always, more than ready to meet Gertie half-way. It would be his affair to see that her advances were received in better part in future than they had been.

  She went on busily with her ironing, waiting for him to begin. But Eddie seemed to experience a certain embarrassment in coming to the subject. While she took article after article from the clothes-basket at her side, he wandered about the room aimlessly, puffing at a pipe which seemed never to stay lighted.

  [Illustration: MARRIED--THOUGH SECRETLY ENEMIES.]

  "That's the toughest nut I've ever been set to crack," he said at length, pointing his pipestem after the vanished Hornby. "Why on earth did you give him a letter to me?"

  "He asked me to. I couldn't very well say no."

  "I can't make out what people are up to in the old country. They think that if a man is too big a rotter to do anything at all in England, they've only got to send him out here and he'll make a fortune."

  "He may improve."

  "I hope so. Look here, Nora, you've thoroughly upset Gertie."

  "She's very easily upset, isn't she?"

  "It's only since you came that things haven't gone right. We never used to have scenes."

  "So you blame me. I came prepared to like her and help her. She met all my advances with suspicion."

  "She thinks yon look down on her. You ought to remember that she never had your opportunities. She's earned her own living from the time she was thirteen. You can't expect in her the refinements of a woman who's led the protected life you have."

  "Now, Eddie, I haven't said a word that could be turned into the least suggestion of disapproval of anything she did."

  "My dear, your whole manner has expressed disapproval. You won't do things in the way we do them. After all, the way you lived in Tunbridge Wells isn't the only way people can live. Our ways suit us, and when you live amongst us you must adopt them."

  "She's never given me a chance to learn them," said Nora obstinately. "She treated me with suspicion and enmity the very first day I came here. When she sneered at me because I talked of a station instead of a depot, of course I went on talking of a station. What do you think I'm made of? Because I prefer to drink water with my meals instead of your strong tea, she says I'm putting on airs."

  Marsh made a pleading gesture.

  "Why can't you humor her? You see, you've got to take the blame for all the English people who came here in the past and were lazy, worthless and supercilious. They called us Colonials and turned up their noses at us. What do you expect us to do?--say, 'Thank you very much, sir.' 'We know we're not worthy to black your boots.' 'Don't bother to work, it'll be a pleasure for us to give you money'? It's no good blinking the fact. There was a great prejudice against the English. But it's giving way now, and every sensible man and woman who comes out can do something to destroy it."

  "All I can say," said Nora, going over to the stove to change her iron, "is if you're tired of having me here, I can go back to Winnipeg. I shan't have any difficulty in finding something to do."

  "Good Lord, I don't want you to go. I like having you here. It's--it's company for Gertie. And jobs aren't so easy to find as you think, especially now the winter's coming on; everyone wants a job in the city."

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "I want you to make the best of things and meet her half-way. You must make allowances for her even if you think her unreasonable. It's Gertie you've got to spend most of your time with."

  He was so manifestly distressed and, as he hadn't been so hard on her as she had expected and in her own heart felt that she deserved, Nora softened at once.

  "I'll have a try."

  "That's a good girl. And I think you ought to apologize to her for what you said just now."

  "I?" said Nora, aflame at once. "I've got nothing to apologize for. She drove me to distraction."

  There was a moment's pause while Eddie softly damned the pipe he had forgotten to fill, for not keeping lighted.

  "She says she won't speak to you again unless you beg her pardon."

  "Really! Does she look upon that as a great hardship?"

  "My dear! We're twelve miles from the nearest store. We're thrown upon each other for the entire winter. Last year there was a bad blizzard, and we didn't see a soul outside the farm for six weeks. Unless we learn to put up with one another's whims, life becomes a perfect hell."

  Nora stopped her work and set down her iron.

  "You can go on talking all night, Eddie, I'll never apologize. Time after time when she sneered at me till my blood boiled, I've kept my temper. She deserved ten times more than I said. Do you think I'm going to knuckle under to a woman like that?"

  "Remember she's my wife, Nora."

  "Why didn't you marry a lady?"

  "What the dickens do you think is the use of being a lady out here?"

  "You've degenerated since you left England."

  "Now look here, my dear, I'll just tell you what Gertie did for me. She was a waitress in Winnipeg at the Minnedosa Hotel, and she was making money. She knew what the life was on a farm--much harder than anything she'd been used to in the city--but she accepted all the hardship of it and the monotony of it, because--because she loved me."

  "She thought it a good match. You were a gentleman."

  "Fiddledidee! She had the chance of much better men than me. And when----"

  "Such men as Frank Taylor, no doubt."

  "And when I lost my harvest two years running, do you know what she did? She went back to the hotel in Winnipeg for the winter, so as to carry things on till the next harvest. And at the end of the winter, she gave me every cent she'd earned to pay the interest of my mortgage and the installments on the machinery."

  Nora had been more moved by this recital than she would have cared to confess. She turned away her head to hide that her eyes had filled with tears. After all, a woman who could show such devotion as that, and to her brother---- Yes, she would try again.

  "Very well: I'll apologize. But leave me alone with her. I--I don't think I could do it even before you, Eddie."

  "Fine! That's a good girl. I'll go and tell her."

  Nora felt repaid in advance for any sacrifice to her pride as he beamed on her, all the look of worriment gone. She was once more busy at her ironing-board, bending low over her work to hide her confusion, when he returned with Gertie. A glance at her sister-in-law told her that there was to be no unbending in that quarter until she had made proper atonement. There was little conciliatory about that sullen face.

  However, she made an effort to speak lightly until, once Eddie had taken his departure, she could make her apology.

  "I've been getting on famously with the ironing."

  "Have you?"

  "This is one of the few things I can do all right."

  "Any child can iron."

  "Well, I'll be going down to the shed," said her brother uneasily.

  "What for?" said Gertie quickly.

  "I want to see about mending that door. It hasn't been closing right."

  "I thought Nora had something to say to me."

  "So she has: that's what I'm going to leaves you alone for."

  "I like that. She insults me before everybody and then, when she's going to apologize, it's got to be private. No, thank you."

  "What do you mean, Gertie?" asked Nora.

  "You sent Ed in to tell me you was goin' to apologize for what you'd said, didn't you?"

  "And I'm ready to: for peace and quietness."

  "Well, what you said was before the men, and it's before the men you must say you're sorry."

  "How can you ask me to do such
a thing!" cried Nora indignantly.

  "Don't be rough on her, Gertie," pleaded her husband. "No one likes apologizing."

  "People who don't like apologizing should keep a better lookout on their tongue."

  "It can't do you any good to make her eat humble pie before the men."

  "Perhaps it won't do me any good, but it'll do her good!"

  "Gertie, don't be cruel. I'm sorry if I lost my temper just now, and said anything that hurt you. But please don't make me humiliate myself before the others."

  "I've made up my mind," said Gertie, folding her arms across her breast, "so it's no good talking."

  "Don't you see that it's bad enough to have to beg your pardon before Eddie?"

  "Good Lord!" said Gertie irritably, "why can't you call him Ed like the rest of us. 'Eddie' sounds so sappy."

  "I've called him Eddie all my life: it's what our mother called him," said Nora sadly.

  "Oh, it's all of a piece. You do everything you can to make yourself different from all of us."

  She stalked over to the window and stood with folded arms looking out toward the wood-pile on which Reggie was seated--it is to be presumed having a moment's respite after his arduous labors.

  "No, I don't," pleaded Nora. "At least I don't mean to. Why won't you give me any credit for trying to do my best to please you?"

  "That's neither here nor there." She suddenly wheeled about, facing them both. "Go and fetch the men, Ed, and then I'll hear what she's got to say."

  "No, I won't, I won't, I won't!" cried Nora furiously. "You drive me too far."

  "You won't beg my pardon?" demanded Gertie threateningly. If she wished to drive Nora beside herself, she accomplished her purpose.

  "I said I could teach you manners," she gave a hysterical laugh, "I made a mistake. I couldn't teach you manners, for one can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

  "Shut up, Nora," said her brother sharply.

  "Now you must make her, Ed," said Gertie grimly.

  He replied with a despairing gesture.

  "I'm sick to death of the pair of you!"

  "I'm your wife, and I'm going to be mistress of this house--my house."

  "It's horrible to make her eat humble pie before three strange men. You've no right to ask her to do a thing like that."