Neighbours Part 11

"Jean is the best swimmer I ever knew," I confessed, modestly. "We lived beside a river at home, and she had a way of bagging all the prizes at our swimming races."

"She bagged bigger game than that," Jack put in. "She stored up a lot of trouble for herself and the rest of us by pulling our worthy Frank out of the mill-pond one day, after the bubbles had begun to come." So then I had to tell Spoof about that incident. But I avoided reference to the pledge that had followed it.

"I'm afraid I shall be over here more often than you'll welcome me,"

said Spoof, as he revelled in the water. "You know, of course, the difference between a bawth and a bath?"

"Don't know that I do," Jack admitted, spouting water after a plunge.

"A bawth," Spoof explained, "is what an Englishman has every morning, and a bath is what a Canadian has Sat.u.r.day nights."

After that we held Spoof under the water while I counted ten, counting very slowly.

When we had had our swim and dried ourselves on the sand we went back up to the house. The shadows were now falling, long and narrow, to the eastward, and the prairie lay hushed and silent in that deep and peaceful calm which marks the summer evening an hour or two before sundown. The gra.s.s had taken on its peculiar evening shade of green; the sunlight was yellow and amber, the stillness so universal and complete that all nature seemed to await in reverence the vesper hour. All but an irrepressible meadow-lark which, from a fence post nearby, thrust its limpid challenge at us as we came up to the house.

After supper Spoof sat and chatted until it was time to light the lamp.

Jean set it on the table, and as its yellow glow fell across his face I realized for the first time that Spoof was not a boy, as were Jack and I. There were lines in the cheeks and about the eyes which, magnified by the shadows under the lamplight, bore evidence that Spoof had known more of this world's cares than was hinted by his usual light-hearted conversation.

Presently he was talking of England; easing, perhaps the homesickness in his heart by calling up scenes of leafy lanes and misty sun-shot landscapes linking deeply into his life. He had tales of London as well; tales of art treasures and music and theatres all alight with life and beauty; tales of grave-stones marking the great of a nation with a history reaching back into the early obscurity of Western civilization.

Something about the pride he showed in the great deeds of the past seemed to strike us strangely--we of a country whose history was still so much in the future and whose greatest deeds were still to be done.

"I tell you," said Spoof, "it is a wonderful thing to have a share in the foundation work of a nation that is going on to-day on these prairies. It's a wonderful thing to lay corner-stones of empire. But it's a dangerous thing to have no past to steady you, to humble you, to inspire. It's just as dangerous to live too much in the future, as we do here, as to live too much in the past, as perhaps we do in England."

"That's why we need some of you people from the Old Land to mix with ours," said Jean. "We need something to link our future with our past--to give us balance, poise."

"Poise is the word, I think," Spoof commented. "New countries have energy, ambition, enthusiasm, courage, optimism--all wonderful qualities--but they are likely to need poise. That is something we are perhaps overstocked with at home. My blessed countrymen are so well poised that I lose patience with them now and again because they don't lose patience with other people."

"Still," said Jack, "it's a great thing to be adaptable. What other people would be so ready to adjust themselves to the ways of the country, to set out their duck traps----"

"Oh, don't let us have any more of that!" Marjorie exclaimed. "I've been all afternoon nursing Jean back into good humor, and I'm not too sure of her yet. Let's change the subject. Do you sing, Mr. Spoof?"

"Only at great distances from civilization,--my bullocks could say a word or two about my musical voice if they were so disposed. But surely you or Miss Hall----"

"Jean sings and plays, if we have anything to play on," Marjorie declared, "But we haven't added a piano yet to our equipment. I suppose we shall have to buy a binder and horses and perhaps a thres.h.i.+ng mill before we have any money for musical instruments."

"And a house," I added. "I'd like to see you keep a piano in tune in a cage like this."

"You should have a banjo," said Spoof. "By Jove, just the thing! I've a banjo tucked away somewhere in my belongings. Something I forgot to p.a.w.n at Regina. I'll bring it over and give you lessons, if you'll let me."

"I should be delighted," said Jean, and her voice was quite unnecessarily low and sweet.

There was a late twilight glow in the northern sky and the smell of dew on the prairie gra.s.s filled the air when Spoof decided it was time to go home. We helped him bind up his broken reach and hitch the "bally bullocks" to the wagon and watched him disappear into the darkness. Long after he was lost to sight the rumble of his wagon and the voice of his exhortation could be heard welling up out of the distance.

"A fine chap," said Jack, as we parted for the night. "I am glad we are to have him for a neighbour."

"Yes," said I. But my voice had no ring of enthusiasm.

CHAPTER IX.

The day after Spoof's visit I was plowing with the oxen, followed by an Indian file of expectant blackbirds trailing along in my fresh-turned furrow, when I suddenly became aware of Jack running toward me. He pointed in the direction of Spoof's homestead, and I turned my face to the south. A pillar of creamish-blue smoke rose like a sacrificial column from section Two; rose until it thinned and flattened out against the still, warm, summer heaven.

"What do you make of it?" said Jack, wiping the perspiration from his forehead with the sleeve of his s.h.i.+rt.

I was seized with a sudden and far-fetched sense of humor. "Spoof has taken your advice about the tiger lilies, and is roasting a wild duck,"

I suggested.

"At any rate," Jack retorted, "he has a fire on his hands, and he's just as likely to scatter it as to put it out. Lucky for him the gra.s.s is still green, and there's hardly a puff of wind. Shall we hoof it, or ride the 'bullocks?'"

"Ride them, and save our breath for fire-fighting," I said, with unusual wisdom, as I began to pull the harness from the oxen.

Buck and Bright were by this time fairly accustomed to strange creatures like Jack and me perched on their broad backs, with our legs hooped about their big, flat ribs, and, if the truth must be told, even Jean and Marjorie had made use of them for locomotion in a similar way. At first the oxen had rewarded their riders with a wholly unprecedented burst of speed, but the novelty had soon worn off, and as we now swung ourselves upon them they responded to our urgings with the most unconcerned deliberation. We headed them across the prairie in the direction of section Two, inducing such speed as we could by means of language and the vigorous application of our boot heels.

Soon the fire could be discerned on that part of Spoof's farm where he was engaged in putting up hay. The column of smoke was thinning out; fading into the blue blurr of infinitude; it looked as though the excitement would be quite over before we could arrive. However, we were now bent upon paying Spoof a neighbourly call in any case, and when at last our oxen lumbered up we found him gazing somewhat ruefully upon a heap of smouldering embers. The tires of his wagon, grey-red with heat, peered like coiled serpents from under a blanket of ashes.

"What's the matter, Spoof?" we hailed him. "A cigarette b.u.t.t?"

"No. I was _fixing_ the bullocks, and I've _fixed_ the wagon . . . I forgot the tiger lilies."

There was no anger in Spoof's voice, but a sort of sadness that made us a little ashamed of our sport with him the day before.

"Tell us how it happened," we said, dismounting and turning our oxen to feed along with his at a nearby heap of hay. "We're sorry."

Spoof was himself again. "Of course you are," he rejoined, laughing.

"All my fault. How shall I report this to the Governor? I know; I shall say I drove over a Canadian double-orbed firefly--one must throw in a touch of detail, for its realistic effect--and the spark ignited the hay. By the way, how much does a bally wagon cost? A hundred pounds?"

"Oh, no. You can get a good one for a hundred dollars or less, and perhaps a second-hand----"

"But I mean for the purposes of a communication to the Governor?"

We agreed that for such a purpose the value of a wagon was one hundred pounds.

"It happened like this," Spoof explained. "The bullocks decided to have their afternoon siesta as usual, and were unresponsive to all my blandishments. Then I remembered your simple remedy--the remedy which you said would be sure to fix them. So I brought an armful of hay, spread it impartially under both of them, set fire to it, and stood back for results.

"The process was a very interesting one. At first they seemed to think it was flies, but when their kicking and switching proved ineffectual they gently moved forward just far enough to bring the wagon, half full of hay, over the fire. Then they resumed their slumbers.

"Well, I paused a moment, wondering whether I should let nature take its course and have grilled steak for supper, but I decided that I was in more need of steak on the hoof than in the platter. So I crowded in and unhitched them, and got my eye-brows singed for my pains."

"Good boy, Spoof!" said I. "You couldn't have done more than that."

Whereupon Spoof turned on me a look of grat.i.tude out of all proportion to my remark.

"It's good of you to say that. I felt that I had been rather an a.s.s, don't you know? I was quite sure you would see the smoke. . . . Well,--I say, let's go in and have some tea."

So we had tea, with bread and jam, and afterwards Spoof insisted upon reading paragraphs from _Punch_.

"It's a different kind of humor, don't you know?" he would say, when we failed to laugh at the right moment; "nothing to do with buffalo bones or tiger lilies, or gophers tied by their hind legs to the corner stakes of one's farm. But then, we English are a peculiar people; we can have a joke without making a bonfire over it."