She, however, held her hand out before she turned to speak to Mrs. Radcliffe, but it was a slight relief to both when somebody announced that dinner was ready.
Wyllard sat next to his hostess, and was not sorry that he was only called upon to take part in casual general conversation, though he fancied once or twice that Miss Ismay was unobtrusively studying him. It was also nearly an hour after the meal was over when Mrs. Radcliffe left them alone in her little drawing-room.
"You have, no doubt, a good deal to talk about, and you needn't join us until you're ready," she said. "The Major always reads the London papers after dinner."
Agatha sat down in a low chair near the hearth, and it first of all occurred to Wyllard, who took a place opposite her, that she was, although of full stature, too delicate and dainty, too over-cultivated, in fact, to marry Hawtrey. This was rather curious, since he had hitherto regarded his comrade as a typical, well-educated Englishman; but it now seemed to him that there was a certain streak of coarseness in Gregory. The man, it suddenly flashed upon him, was self-indulgent, and his careless ease of manner, which he had once liked, was rather too much in evidence. In a few moments, however, Agatha turned to him.
"I understand that Gregory is recovering rapidly?" she said.
Wyllard assured her that this was the case, and Agatha said quietly, "He wants me to go out to him."
Wyllard felt that if a girl of this kind had promised to marry him he would not have sent for her but have come in person, if he had been compelled to pledge his last possessions, or crawl to the tideway on his hands and knees. For all that, he was ready to defend his friend.
"I'm afraid it's necessary," he said. "Gregory was quite unfit for such a journey when I left, and he must be ready to commence the season's campaign with the first of the spring. Our summer is short, you see, and with our one-crop farming it's indispensable to get the seed in early: in fact, he will be badly behind as it is."
This was not particularly tactful since, without intending it, he made it evident that he felt his comrade had been to some extent remiss; but Agatha smiled.
"Oh," she said, "I understand! You needn't labour the excuse. But doesn't the same thing apply to you?"
"It certainly did. Now, however, things have become a little easier. My holding's larger than Gregory's, and I have a foreman who can look after it for me."
"Gregory said that you were a great friend of his."
Wyllard seized this opportunity. "He is a great friend of mine, and I like to think it means the same thing. In fact, it's reasonably certain that he saved my life for me."
"Ah!" said Agatha; "that is a thing he didn't mention. How did it come about?"
Wyllard was glad to tell the story: he was anxious to say all he honestly could in Hawtrey's favour.
"We were at work on a railroad trestle – a towering wooden bridge, in British Columbia. It stretched across a deep ravine with great boulders and a stream in the bottom of it, and we stood high up on a staging close beneath the metals. A fast freight, a huge general produce train, came down the track, with one of the new big locomotives hauling it, and when the cars went banging by above us we could hardly hold on to the bridge. Still, the construction foreman was a hustler, and we had to get the spikes in. I was swinging the hammer when I felt the plank beneath me slip. The train, it seems, had jarred the bolt we had our lashings round loose. For a moment I felt that I was going down into the gorge, and then Gregory leaned out and grabbed me. He had only one free hand to do it with, and when he felt my weight one foot swung out from the stringer he had sprung to. It seemed certain that I would pull him with me, too. We hung like that for a space – I don't quite know how long."
He paused for a moment, apparently feeling the stress of it again, and there was a faint thrill in his voice when he went on.
"It was then," he said, "I knew just what kind of man Gregory Hawtrey was. Anybody else would have let me go; but he held on. Then I got my hand on some of the framing, and he swung me on to the stringer."
He saw the gleam in Agatha's eyes. "Oh!" she said, "that is just what he must have done. He was like that always – impulsive, splendidly generous."
Wyllard felt that he had succeeded, though he knew that there were men on the prairie who called his comrade slackly careless, instead of impulsive. Agatha, however, spoke again.
"But Gregory wasn't a carpenter," she said.
"In those days when dollars were scanty we had to be whatever we could. There wasn't much specialisation of handicrafts out there then. The farmer whose crop was ruined took up the railroad shovel, or borrowed a saw from somebody and set about building houses, or anything else that was wanted."
"Of course!" said Agatha. "Besides, he was always wonderfully quick. He could learn any game by just watching it awhile. He did all he undertook brilliantly."
It occurred to Wyllard that Gregory had, at least, made no great success of farming; but that occupation, as practised on the prairie, demands a good deal more than quickness and what some call brilliancy from the man who undertakes it. He must, as they say out there, possess the capacity for staying with it; the grim courage to hold fast the tighter under each crushing blow, when his teams die, or the grain shrivels under the harvest frost, or ragged ice hurtling before a roaring blast does the reaping. It was, however, evident that this girl had an unquestioning faith in Gregory Hawtrey, and once more Wyllard felt compassionate towards her. He wondered if she would have retained it had the man spent those four years in England instead of Canada: for it was clear from the contrast between her and her picture that she had grown in many ways since she had given her promise to her lover. He had said what he could in Hawtrey's favour, but now he felt that something was due to the girl.
"Gregory told me to explain what things are like out there," he said. "I think it is because they are so different from what you are accustomed to that he has waited as long as he has done. He wanted to make them as easy as possible for you, and now he would like you to realise what is before you."
He was almost astonished at the girl's comprehension, for she glanced round the luxurious room with a faint smile.
"You look on me as part of – this? I mean it seems to you that I fit in with my surroundings, and would only be in harmony with them?"
"Yes," said Wyllard gravely, "I think you fit in with them excellently."
Agatha laughed. "Well," she said, "I was once, to a certain extent, accustomed to something similar; though, after all, one could hardly compare the Grange with Garside Scar. Still, that was some time ago, and I have earned my living for several years now. That counts for something, doesn't it?"
She glanced down at her dress. "For instance, this is the result of a good deal of self-denial, though the cost of it was partly worked off in music lessons, and the stuff was almost the cheapest I could get. I sang at concerts – and it was part of my stock-in-trade. After all, why should you think me only capable of living in luxury?"
"I didn't quite go that far."
She laughed again. "Then is Canada such a very dreadful place? I have heard of other Englishwomen going out there as farmers' wives. Do they all live unhappily?"
"No," said Wyllard; "at least, they show no sign of it, and some of them and the city-born Canadians are, I think, the salt of this earth. Probably it's easy to be calm and gracious in such a place as this – though I naturally don't know since I've never tried it – but when a woman who toils from sunrise to sunset most of the year keeps her sweetness and serenity, it's a very different and much finer thing. But I'll try to answer the other question. The prairie isn't dreadful; it's a land of sunshine and clear skies. Heat and cold – and we have them both – don't worry one there. There's optimism in the crystal air. It's not beautiful like these valleys, but it has its beauty. It's vast and silent, and, though our homesteads are crude and new, once you pass the breaking it's primevally old. That gets hold of one somehow. It's wonderful after sunset in the early spring, when the little cold wind's like wine, and it runs white to the horizon with the smoky red on the rim of it melting into transcendental green. When the wheat rolls